Ms Siobh?n McArdle:

I agree absolutely in terms of the requirement to support people to live and age well and live their best lives in the community. One of the pieces of service is the access to home support hours. There has been an increase in investment in home support. In excess of €700 million is allocated in the budget for the provision of home support hours. Then there is extra allocation for home support for people with a disability because there are slightly different models. People with a disabilities may access or require personal assistants, maybe to support them in employment in addition to care in the home.

It is unfortunate when people have to wait for home support. One of the challenges that we identify is access to recruiting home support workers. Within the Department and in combination with the HSE, we have established a strategic working group looking at workforce, particularly for our home support workers and our healthcare assistants in providing care. One of the initiatives has been to support the investment, but also to make some changes to employment, for instance, encouraging or supporting the use of the living wage, increasing the number of visas to attract workforce from overseas to come to Ireland and ensuring that we have timely access to home support.

The Deputy will have noticed that there has been a reduction in the numbers waiting for home support. It is not easy when any individual has to stay in an acute hospital or is delayed in being discharge, but we have seen a significant improvement in those delays across the country. However, I accept that it is hard for individuals.