Ms Catherine Cox:

The lack of home care support workers feeds into the challenges that carers face in caring for their loved ones at home because many of those families rely on home care workers. We know the terms and conditions for home care workers are not very good, particularly outside of the HSE. This is a big bugbear of ours. The HSE pays its staff well, and rightly so; it pays them travel and pensions. Yet, when they are subcontracting out home care, they do not offer or afford those same good terms and conditions to third-party providers and charities like ours. One of the roles we play is providing home care workers to go into homes. We cannot recruit or retain workers. When we do, we train them and they to go on work in the HSE. That is a problem. With the new tender, we need to see that addressed.