Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this good motion on home care. It is a good critique of where we are at the moment. There is no argument, here or outside here, but that older people are better off being cared for at home. I have experienced that as a care worker myself and in the past six or seven months of my mother's life when she was cared for at home. Home is where our parents want to be. It is where they grew up, where their family and friends are and it is the best environment, sometimes, for end-of-life care. Sometimes it is not conducive but it is the best place for our loved ones to be at that particular time.

It is better in financial terms because if a person is in hospital for a week, it adds up to approximately €6,000. If a person is in a nursing home, it costs €1,000 per week and, therefore it makes a lot of financial sense to have somebody in that situation in their home. Then there is the matter of age demographics. In the next seven or eight years there will be many more people aged over 65. Whether they need that care will depend on their own situation but demographics will play a part in how we provide for our older citizens.

I understand considerable time has been given to home care hours in the past five to ten years but we have to look at where these hours are going and the private companies involved in private home care work. Probably the best example of the whole structure of this, which the Minister of State referred to in her statement, is how much private companies charge the HSE per hour. If we break this down it does not make sense. The worker who does all the work is getting paid €11.50 or €12 per hour and the company is charging €28 per hour. Somebody is making a lot of money out of this. If we look at what the main private operators got in 2020, it is eye-watering. In 2020, three companies got the following from the HSE: Home Instead Senior Care, €58 million; Bluebird Care, €33 million; and Irish HomeCare, €13 million. I am sure that has gone up incrementally in the past two years. It would be better to put resources into a public system where workers are looked after properly. The private sector is haemorrhaging workers because they are not looked after. If the company is getting that amount, it is hugely profitable but, at the same time, workers are not even paid to travel from A to B. If they are not getting paid for that, then it is no wonder people are leaving the sector. There is also a good angle to this. I worked for the HSE directly and it was a better rate of pay. The executive looked after its workers and that is a better system, considering the huge resources that go into this. It is better for the worker, the person they are going to, the family, society, the taxpayer and everybody. It is not about looking to the private model all the time because that system is not conducive to home care and proper care in the home.

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