Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On the issue of home care workers' PPE and nursing home workers' PPE, over the past seven days, from 23 April to 29 April, 6.63 million items of PPE have been delivered across the health service. Some 54% of this volume was delivered to community residential facilities in 1,767 individual deliveries. As for the full distribution, 54%, as I said, went there and 8% went to home care. I had a very good meeting yesterday with Home and Community Care Ireland, HCCI, which represents many home care providers across the country. We have put in place a direct contact point for them with a national director in the HSE. They have also brought forward some other suggestions, which I am working through, regarding their own provisions. Home care workers are now being provided with 8% of our entire PPE. Some 497,380 items of PPE over the course of the last week went to home care. We want to continue to do better and to do more on this. It is a fair point. Regarding the fuel allowance, I will resist speculating about Departments that are beyond my remit. I certainly will pass on the Deputy's comments to the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection.

The Deputy is right about nursing homes. A voluntary redeployment scheme is in place. I have seen figures of more than 200 HSE staff who have been redeployed on various occasions to private nursing homes. The number is significantly increased from when I was last in this House, when it was about 61. We have now reached an agreement with home care providers to redeploy too. The indemnity issue has been ironed out. An agreement was reached about 48 hours ago. I expect to see a benefit from that shortly. There was a bit of back and forth between Nursing Homes Ireland and my Department about the funding scheme. Clarifications have been issued. The deadline is 30 April, that is, now. A surge of applications is coming in. We are turning them around quite quickly, within 24 to 48 hours. That will also help our nursing homes. The Deputy is right about the testing. There was an occasion when more than 900 nursing home staff were out awaiting various tests or with symptoms. We are testing people and getting their results back quickly. Most of them will be negative and they will be able to go back to work. We can help nursing homes through quick testing, direct redeployment, the home care working scheme and the funding scheme.

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