Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the issues the Deputy raises. First, there has been an unprecedented resourcing of home care packages. The one major constraint at the moment is securing the necessary number of people to work in home care. That is the only constraint; it is not resources. That is a challenge in terms of making sure that we can get enough workers into the sector from a variety of sources. That work is under way.

There will be engagement specifically with the HSE on ambulance services and on the issues that have been raised by Deputies. We constantly engage with the Minister. We just had a meeting of the Cabinet subcommittee on health in respect of that, because of the enormous pressures on the health service at the moment, not least brought on by Covid, which is having a very significant impact.

The two big hits to the health service in the last 18 months have been Covid and the cybersecurity attack, which have hit front-line services hard and put enormous strain on everybody working in them. We are very conscious of that. The winter initiative will be published this week to try to deal with that.

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