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

The Deputy will appreciate that I do not have specific details on individual cases to hand. There are no patient files on my desk, and even if there were, it would be inappropriate to discuss patient information in this House. I know from my previous work as a medical doctor the difficulty and enormous barriers there can be to providing 24-7 nursing care with ventilation at home. It is difficult to provide and is not as straightforward as a normal home care or intensive home care package.

With regard to the general issue, the number of delayed discharges, where people are in hospitals waiting on home care packages to go home, has fallen considerably in recent years. It peaked at approximately 830 in 2014 and has now fallen to 537. There is still a long way to go but we are in a much better position with regard to delayed discharges generally than we were two years ago. The budget for home care packages and home help has been increased this year to €367 million. That is providing 10.5 million home help hours and 16,750 home care packages this year, an increase from 15,000 last year. Some 1,750 more people will get home care packages this year than did last year. In addition, funding has been retained for 190 intensive home care packages, which is a considerable number.

As regards individual cases, I cannot say why that individual was not approved for an intensive home care package or one of the additional home care packages that are now being funded, but I will ask the Minister for Health to follow up on the matter with the Deputy.

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