Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Devlin for his important question. As we know, day care centres and services have been closed since March 2020. It is a key priority for me, working with the HSE and the Department, to ensure services for older people can open as soon as it is safe to do so. As Deputy Devlin has quite rightly said, the vaccination programme has been rolled out to persons over 70 years of age and as a result, further guidance has been sought from public health on the provision of day care services and how they can be operated safely.

Day care services have been asked to assess what can currently be delivered and requirements to reopen. A subgroup has been established to develop an individualised risk assessment that can be carried out in respect of clients returning to the services. This will focus on safe transport to the service, identification of clients who are safe to return, protection of carers who have not been vaccinated and the impact of this. Finally, we also need to support clients who will not be in a position to return to day care services.

I am hopeful we can move on this soon.

Day care centres are a huge lifeline for the people who attend them. They are important to their well-being and they are looking forward to going back. I am hoping to open centres on a staged basis. If a day care centre previously operated for five days a week, we could open it initially two or three days a week and move from there. We are working very hard on this issue at the moment. I thank the Deputy for his question and the work he does with his own day care centre.

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