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

The budget for home support, home help and home care has increased to €420 million this year. That is up from €306 million in 2015, which is an increase of more than €100 million year in the past three years. That is a considerable increase. It provides 17 million home help hours to 50,000 people. The allocation has not yet been made for 2019. It will be part of the service plan. In the medium term, we need to not just continue to add more money and resources to a system that is not delivering adequately; we need reform. What we propose to do, in line with the Sláintecare plan, is to have a statutory scheme for home help, something similar but not the same as the fair deal scheme. The Deputy will know from the fair deal scheme that people get an assessment and a decision within weeks. This is not happening for home help. We believe it is the model to follow. If we keep doing what we have done in the past, which is to keep adding more resources, staff and money to the system as it is currently structured, we will not get the results we need.

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