Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy can ask me after this. Today I met Mr. Joseph Musgrave from Home and Community Care Ireland and we spoke about home support. The provision to the private sector at the moment is a core rate of €31 per hour, up to a maximum of €34 per hour. The service level agreement made with the HSE and the private sector involves the delivery of 30-minute and 60-minute sessions. There is no concept of 45-minute sessions. Notwithstanding these improvements, there is currently a funded waiting list of approximately 2,800 people who are receiving home support but not the maximum hours advised. This can be due to a shortage of workers at certain times such as weekends. The remaining approximately 3,000 new applicants have funding approval but are waiting for supports.

Some 300 new employment permits have been issued to home care workers from outside the EEA-EU this year. I would like to pay tribute to our home support workers who deliver specialised, quality and essential care to approximately 53,000 people every day, often working split shifts, unsocial hours and weekends. All our home support workers - they are not home helps - have a minimum level 5 QQI qualification and work really hard every day.

Dementia continues to be a priority for me and the Government. In budget 2024 I announced that a minimum of 18% of all new home support hours are now ring-fenced for people with dementia. I have also secured €300,000 new funding for weekend activity clubs for people with young onset dementia. I worked with the Alzheimer Society of Ireland on this.

Budget 2024 also increased the provision of transitional care funding by €4.6 million for next year. Already this year, 8,000 people have used transitional care funding to help them to move from an acute hospital setting to a nursing home.

See this speech in context