Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

That is really disappointing. In the context of us having a crisis in home care at the moment, does the Minister of State realise 6,500 people, mainly older people have been approved for home care but services are not being provided to them? We were discussing earlier the problems of people inappropriately arriving at hospital emergency departments. A major element of that relates to older people who do not have the necessary care at home. What the Minister of State is proposing is a far cry from what was recommended in the expert report.

The current living wage is determined to be €13.85 per hour. The Government is talking about bringing that in over a four-year period. The Minister of State is doing nothing about improving the mileage rate and she is passing the buck completely on continuity of income. If a client goes into hospital or if a client is away, who covers the cost of that for the person providing the service? This falls far short of the recommendations in the report that she commissioned and committed to implementing.

See this speech in context