Mr. Justin Moran:

Our big focus in regard to health is on home care. Government policy since the late 1960s has been that people be assisted to stay home as far as possible and that the care and supports should be available to enable this. Unfortunately, in the past number of years there has been a reduction in the amount of home help hours provided. The HSE will provide fewer home help hours to fewer people in 2017 than in 2011. A real concern is that the number of people who need it is continuously increasing. The HSE's estimate is that between 10% and 11% of people aged 65 will need home help supports, which works out at approximately 63,000 people. We are supplying home help support to some 50,000 people at present so there is a gap between what the HSE anticipates and what we are fulfilling.

In the immediate future we seek an injection of funding to support home help, as 4,500 people are on a waiting list for home help hours or home care packages and that number will grow. We welcome the effort of the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health and older people, Deputy McEntee, to move forward with a consultation on a statutory scheme to provide home care, which is badly needed. We look forward to participating in the scheme but it is a medium to long-term solution. The immediate problem concerns people who are in hospitals and who cannot get home help hours and family carers who do amazing work but who are driven right to the edge to support people. Social workers tell us they are waiting for recipients of home help hours to die to free up home help hours they can reallocate.

The budget for home help is €192 million and we will be looking for an increase, though we have not come up with a specific figure yet. The HSE has also indicated that it will be looking for investment in this area.