Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is a welcome Bill despite its technical nature. It addresses a number of registration-related issues affecting certain registrants with the Medical Council and CORU. The Bill makes a small number of amendments to the Medical Council's complaints investigation process and to liability in civil proceedings for specified persons. It makes a number of amendments to support the performance by the Medical Council of its triage, investigation and adjudication of complaints functions under the 2007 Act. It also seeks to ensure social care workers applying for registration with CORU are required to meet the same safe standards as all other CORU professions. In addition, it provides that the Minister may vary the qualifications to be listed in Schedule 3 to the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005.

The Bill will remove roadblocks to people who hold a British medical degree from availing of medical intern posts in this State and ensure a route to registration on the general division for international doctors. These are small but important steps that will help us attract more doctors from abroad. However, it is no replacement for addressing the fact that Irish doctors have been emigrating in their droves over the past few years. The Government must speak to newly-qualified doctors and ask them why. I accept some choose to travel but in my experience the vast majority are leaving this State because of our health system. They are leaving because of the housing situation, their inability to buy or even rent an affordable home and the spiralling cost of living in a country where people are choosing between food and fuel. This is a country where people are waiting until they have two or three medical issues to see a GP because of the cost. That is not to mention the difficulty of getting an appointment to see a GP.

This Bill is a missed opportunity because it does not provide for regulation of the home care sector. This sector is in desperate need of professional regulation. The Minister of State should not take my word for this. HIQA has called for regulation of home care services and so too have unions and workers in the sector. It is vital we have adequate regulation in home care to prevent unregulated workers intimately caring for vulnerable people.

Other issues such as low pay, non-recognition of the vital service that home care and home support workers provide and the HSE's overreliance on private home care providers must also be dealt with. The HSE spends €20 million a year on home care support. It should be directly employing these carers and ensuring they have good pay, good conditions, pensions and a clear career path.

In the past few weeks, I met the National Community Care Network and Family Carers Ireland. They are both saying we have a recruitment crisis, as are service users. The Government is doing very little to address the matter. Sinn Féin in government will work towards a sectoral industrial relations solution for pay and conditions to provide a basis floor with standards that will attract or retain the workers in this sector. We will make home care an attractive career opportunity and provide training. We will add home care sector workers to the critical skills list for employment visas and permits and prioritise direct public sector service provision in the sector.

Approximately 35,000 home care hours per week are not being delivered, with more than 4,500 people who have been granted funding on waiting lists for carers. We need to make this sector an attractive career. We need to move away from nursing home care to care in the home. Recently, I met Alone and last week I met Age Action Ireland. Everyone favours our older people ageing in place, that is, in their homes and communities. Older people deserve better and Sinn Féin in government will ensure that.

The Minister of State has sat in on many a meeting with me around our older persons' advocacy groups and everything else. She is well aware of how difficult it is for these people to attend to people who are in that sort of need. This sector needs to be looked after much better and our old people certainly need to be looked after much better.

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