Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

On the issue of home care, we know that the allocation made in the service plan for 2023 was very significantly cut from 23.9 million hours to 22 million hours in order to fund the improved pay and conditions. What that amounted to was older people paying the price for improving the conditions for staff. Of course, staff conditions have to be improved and we were running into serious difficulties because of poor conditions, but a bigger envelope of funding should have been provided. Conditions should not have been improved at the expense of older people. I am concerned about what is going to happen next year in relation to that. The HSE has told us that we have almost reached the maximum number of 22 million hours, and we will likely do so at the end of the year. There has been a slowing down. If there is no increase on those hours, what will the Department do about the recognised logjam that exists? Some 6,000 people who are at home have been approved for home care and are on the waiting list. What is going to happen to that very significant number of vulnerable people? The likelihood is they will be denied their rights, but it will also result in additional visits to accident and emergency departments.

The other issue relates to the number of people involved in delayed discharges. Approximately 150 of them will need home care. If there is no capacity for increasing the number of home care hours, is that not a huge difficulty for the operation of the health service generally?