Ms Colette Bennett:

I thank the Deputy. In respect of older people, pension provision inadequacy was also mentioned by Professor Kinsella and the fact that it is a very gendered issue.

We have an expanding ageing population and it is a key factor in terms of the dynamic between housing policy and pensions policy. Long before now, the State pension was meant to provide for a person's living expenses but it was never intended to provide for accommodation expenses on top of that or certainly not accommodation expenses the likes of which we are seeing now. The adequacy of the State pension is important. We are very concerned that the new pensions commission is dealing with the State pension only, not with auto-enrolment. Such policy incoherence will give rise to a serious issue because when we look at the adequacy of the State pension into the future, we must also consider adequacy of income now and into the pre-pensionable age. For example, people on lower incomes who may be captured by the auto-enrolment system, of necessity, are facing having a reduced income now to pay for an inadequate income in the future. Social Justice Ireland has a policy proposal for a universal State pension based on residency, which we put together in 2018, but we had been advancing it for quite some time. It is not connected to a person's household status, so it loses that gendered element. Pension provision and income adequacy are important factors when it comes to a standard of living in older age.

Deputy Ryan mentioned our proposals on reinstating the 2010 level of housing grants for older people and people with disabilities. That is something we are still progressing because the latest data show that it has decreased again and fewer people are in receipt of it. We know, for example, that a significant proportion of older people are living in substandard accommodation, both through data available from EUROSTAT and through the Irish longitudinal study on ageing, TILDA, and happiness studies. That is something that must be addressed and increased. Increases were made last year but they were not sufficient to address the current need and the future need. Again, housing is a factor. At the time, the Departments of Health and Housing, Local Government and Heritage produced their policy statement on housing for the older population and we would like to see some of the recommendations starting to get implemented because it focused on the spectrum of need.

Approximately 3.7% of the population will need nursing home care and we want to see adequate nursing home provision. We saw the damage inadequate nursing home provision can cause in the early stages of the pandemic, so we need to see more adequate provision and enforcement of standards in the sector. That requires resources. We would like to see the funding report on nursing homes that was meant to be published in November 2019. It was delayed again in October 2020 due to GDPR concerns, but we would like to see it because it will feed into the resourcing allocations for nursing homes and for care provision. We want to see an increase in home help hours and home help packages. While the number of people accessing home help has increased, the number of hours has decreased, so last year for those lucky enough to receive home care provision, it was less than the previous year. A really interesting point to come out of the latest set of data from the performance report in the HSE, dated September 2020, is that the year-on-year waiting list has decreased by almost 5,000, yet we have not seen a similar increase in the number of people providing care. There is something about the data that does not make sense. The support of members would be gratefully received if it were possible to look into that a bit further. Regarding the spectrum of housing, we know that we need greater supports for those who have their own homes under the nursing home support scheme but also in terms of social and affordable housing provision for those who want to downsize and rightsize their housing and those who want to live within their communities but in more supported accommodation.