Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy's points are very interesting. His latter point is a kind of money follows the user approach so that the user can employ his or her home care with the same budget.

I encourage the Deputy to encourage his constituents to avail of the public consultation because this is the first time the Department has assessed what is happening nationally. While the objective is to bring about a better universal scheme that is accessible to all with equity and fairness at its heart it also gives us the chance to examine the existing scheme. There is no consistent national regulation of the current scheme. It would be deeply troubling if resources are being allocated and paid for but not delivered. That is a management issue that I need to take up with the Health Service Executive, HSE, to ensure that people are getting at the very least the limited resources allocated to them. People are not satisfied with the resources being allocated but they should at least get full value for what has been allocated to them. If the Deputy has details of any particular case I would be very interested in following it up to see whether it is private home care or HSE care and what we can learn from that.

The Deputy mentioned dementia. I met with the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health this morning which is working actively in this area and that ties in with supporting people with dementia in the home and having a dementia liaison person to assist them. There is a lot to be done in this area and I am confident we can make progress working together.

I intend to lead that from the front for as long as I am in this office to get a scheme up and down the country. It could take up to two years to get the kind of scheme I want to see which gives everybody access to the home help they need but that is not a reason for us to take our eye off the ball in the intervening two years to ensure we do have full accountability for the existing service. While it may not be perfect we have to ensure it is the best it can be.

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