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

At the risk of repeating myself, if we add up the increase of 56 intensive home care packages and the number of home help hours included in them, there is no decrease. Nationally, the number of home help hours has increased from 16.36 million last year to 17.1 million this year. This is a significant increase in the delivery of home help hours but I appreciate it is not enough. If we are trying to move away from acute services and towards supporting more people in their homes, we need to invest further in home care delivery, home care packages and home help hours, but we can only do this incrementally, as the Deputy will appreciate, because of the demands on the acute side. It is a gradual move and shift away, in line with what is set out in the Sláintecare report, which is to deliver services at the nearest point possible to the person.

The Deputy mentioned the local authority, GP practices and Navan hospital. Unfortunately, many of these issues are above my pay grade to comment on.

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