Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

All right. As of May 2024, 1,242 residents under the age of 65 were in nursing homes, of whom 85% were over the age of 50. Funding has been provided to support 81 people to transition to homes of their choosing within the community. A total of 340 residents will continue in their nursing home placement due to their current personal will and preference or due to an assessment of their needs, while 44 people have received enhanced quality-of-life supports while continuing their placement in nursing homes as transition planning is ongoing. Investment will continue. Eighty-one transitions have been funded. It is not just about taking the person out of the nursing home but also about ensuring that the home will be adapted or that whatever the person chooses as regards housing will be accommodated. There are a few steps in transitioning people. Housing is one part of it but the care package will go with that. There is ongoing work in that regard. When we started, we were able to do only about 18 in the first year's budget, but we are now at 81 and that is increasing all the time.

Absolutely, there is still considerable pressure on our CDNTs. We have funding for 720 posts that are there. We ran the recruitment campaign but, as the Deputy noted, a lot of professionals are choosing not to work on CDNTs. There is no denying that, but we have the funding ring-fenced to ensure we can still attract people from abroad and current fourth-year students. We are also looking at the apprenticeship model, which we have seen work very well for social care, and at other models we can use as well. We have a workforce planning and steering group working on that. It is not just the Department of disability that is represented on the workforce planning group but also the Departments of further and higher education and Health, the HSE, CORU and other stakeholders. It is everybody talking together to see how we can drive it forward. This year, it is fantastic to see we have had a 33% increase for this September and the following September in the number of college placements for occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech and language therapy and dietetics. On top of that, we are also looking to address the issue of assistant posts with an apprenticeship model.