Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the question and give him absolute assurance that the Government is acutely aware of the importance of home help services. Every month, more than 1,500 new people are provided with home help services. In the period to the end of April, a total of 6,000 new people were provided with home help services. That brought the number of people receiving home help support to almost 53,000.

As Deputy Calleary has said, demand is very strong and there are people waiting for this service. That is regrettable, but the situation, as we all realise, is that we have allocated 18.3 million home help hours. The HSE tries to allocate the hours across the year in an equitable way. It does not keep a reserve of hours. It allocates them to people in need. New people are continually presenting and, unfortunately, there is a waiting period for people to receive care. That is unfortunate but it is the reality of the situation. It is not for the lack of desire to expand the service because, as Deputies know, because they heard the Taoiseach say it yesterday, the budget for this service has been increased by 50% over the past four years. This is a rapidly expanding service which the Government recognises is important and is putting extra resources into.

On top of that, the Government is developing a statutory scheme and work is ongoing with that. Deputy Calleary rightly said that people believe they have an entitlement to this service but then they face a wait. The solution is obviously to develop a statutory scheme. The Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Jim Daly, has been doing significant work on developing the scheme and has held detailed consultation with people who are at the sharp end to develop it.

I can assure Deputy Calleary that the Government is determined to deal with this as effectively as possible, but Deputies will read elsewhere in the newspapers today of the pressure of managing spending within the spending limits that have been provided. Substantial new resources have been devoted this year to home help services but there is still an obligation to try to manage within that provision. That is a pressure throughout the health service in particular. There will be efforts next week to meet those who are at the core of deciding the allocation of resources to try to meet them in the most effective way possible.

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