Ms Gráinne Loughran:

We recognise the challenges with that. Regulating services for fewer than three people is difficult but leaving that cohort without plans for further measures would enable the continuation of a lot of the informal care whereby carers who might provide live-in care, for example, would continue to work unlicensed and unregulated. As it is, there is no data, but that would continue as it does now in the background, without fully recognising that. Those carers would therefore remain open to exploitation in terms of pay and conditions. Those availing of the care are also at risk with regard to the standard of care they might receive. To the best of our knowledge there are no plans to regulate in that way on a private individual basis. It was considered as part of the impact analysis, and the role of Coru was looked at in the context of providing individual regulations. Part of the challenge outlined was that the lead time to introduce a mandatory registration process for home-support workers would require a minimum of five years and a maximum of ten years. It also states that international evidence indicates best practice is to first introduce regulations for providers and only then is the requirement introduced for individual workers to register. We see the benefits in a tandem approach where the sector is regulated followed by a process for individual workers. The Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland, the Great Care Co-op and a lot of those organisations are strong on the role of migrant workers in particular in providing domestic and home care on a private basis.