Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this timely and important motion. For many families, this is a priority. Indeed, many families are trying to provide home care either part time or full time and they find it exceptionally difficult to do so. Many are struggling. As more and more people live longer and demand for home care increases significantly, this is the issue. Everybody wants to remain in their own home. We want it for our parents and elderly relatives and we will want it for ourselves. This is the problem we are facing.

It is great to see the Minister of State this evening. In her intervention, she stated she had increased home care hours. However, she also said demand is increasing at pace and, despite the progress she has made, many people and their families are still unable to access the home care they need to support them.

I commend the Minister of State on her action in regard to the new tender for private home care providers, which she said will include the payment of the living wage and mileage allowance.

I fully endorse the remarks of my colleague, Deputy Connolly, in that regard. It is totally unacceptable, however, that home care workers travel from home to home, sometimes long distances in rural areas, without payment for mileage or an allowance for the time spent travelling. Caring and home care are valuable work and salaries and conditions commensurate with their value must be paid. If that is not done, they will continue to be undervalued and people - men and women - will not enter the profession. I agree it is an overhang of the fact that caring was seen as women's work, carried on behind closed doors. That is the reason salaries are so low. Caring must be seen to be, and be, a fulfilling career. Right now, that is not the case.

As many Deputies have stated, the reality of home care in many cases is that even when a package is allocated - and it is not easy to get an allocation - perhaps of half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening, there are no carers to do that work seven days a week. A person might get four or five days. There is often no cover for holidays, such as bank holidays, or if a carer or someone in his or her family has Covid. In many cases, that is the reality and there are many families who are really struggling.

The programme for Government committed to the introduction of a statutory scheme to support people in their own homes. I could be wrong but my understanding was that such a scheme would be in place by the end of the year. When will that scheme be in place? When will there be an entitlement to home care? When will that be put on a statutory footing?

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