Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The nursing homes support scheme, the fair deal scheme, is a system of financial support for those in need of long-term nursing home care. Participants contribute according to their means while the State pays the balance of the cost.

In 2015, the scheme has an allocation of €993 million. In budget 2015, additional funding of €25 million was provided to support services that provide alternatives to, and relieve pressures on, acute hospitals. Of this €25 million, some €10 million was used to provide an additional 300 places under the fair deal scheme. This reduced the waiting time for approved applicants from 17 weeks to four weeks. Some €8 million was used to provide access to an additional 115 short-stay beds across the Dublin area, €5 million was used to provide 400 additional home care packages which will benefit 600 people in the course of the year, and €2 million was used to expand the community intervention team services in primary care across Dublin and the surrounding region.

In April 2015, the Government provided a further €74 million to address issues that impact on delayed discharges. This amount was in addition to €25 million provided earlier and was allocated as follows. Some €44 million was allocated to the nursing homes support scheme to provide an additional 1,600 places and to further reduce waiting times for approved applicants from 11 to four weeks. This funding will allow the HSE to increase the rate of approvals during periods of increased demand, including any surge during the winter months so as to maintain the waiting time for approved applicants at no more than four weeks. In the coming months, the number of people supported under the scheme will increase on an ongoing basis. The scheme will be supporting in excess of 23,900 people by the end of 2015. The remaining €30 million was principally applied to provide additional transitional beds, some of which were on a temporary basis to address the particular pressures then being experienced by acute hospitals.

When the nursing homes support scheme commenced, a commitment was made that it would be reviewed after three years. This review is considering the scheme's long-term viability as well as looking at how well the current model of provision is balancing residential care with care in the community, and whether this needs to be adjusted to better reflect what older people want and need. The review of the scheme is almost completed and is expected to be published shortly.

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