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

I thank the Deputy for raising this important question. The Government is committed to better community-based services, shifting care to the home and offering greater choice for people. Progress has been made on the number of home care hours delivered through increased investment in recent years. Last year, the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, allocated additional funding of €150 million for home support. This year's HSE national service plan sets a target to provide 24 million home support hours, 5 million hours more than was provided last year. It is estimated that at the end of September some 15 million hours had been provided to over 53,000 people. This is 2.2 million more hours compared to the same period last year. That is a real increase in the amount of service being provided to people. The funding secured in budget 2021 to secure the additional five million hours has been maintained for 2022.

Significant inroads have been made into reducing waiting lists for funding approval for new or additional services, from more than 7,800 in January 2020 to just 400 now. While waiting lists for funding approval for new or additional home support services have decreased substantially, there can be delays between funding approval and the provision of home support hours. At the end of September 2021, there were just under 5,000 people assessed and waiting for a carer to become available. That is a significant increase on where we were in January of last year. Although there has been a steady increase in the number of people waiting to receive home support over recent months, it is important to say that the total number of people waiting for home support across both categories has reduced from more than 9,000 at the start of 2020 to about 5,300 now. Efforts are ongoing to enhance the provision of home support and to meet existing demand, including through the ongoing recruitment of home support workers, although this is a challenge. In order to deal with issues around carer capacity in the HSE, it is endeavouring to prioritise services for clients with the highest care needs to ensure that service can commence for those who require it most urgently. The HSE continues to recruit home support workers at local and national levels.

The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, is committed to establishing a cross-departmental strategic workforce advisory group. The role of the group will be to facilitate the views of stakeholders and examine workforce challenges in home support and nursing homes. Potential issues to be considered include recruitment, retention, training, career development and the sustainable employment of home care workers into the future. A call for submissions to identify the issues that need to be considered and to inform the establishment of the group was announced just last Friday. The Department's project team will analyse submissions received to inform the setting up of the group early next year.

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