Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thanks Senators John Kelly, Denis O'Donovan and Denis Landy for addressing this issue.

The cornerstone of Government policy remains supporting all services for vulnerable older people, including assisting them to live at home and in their communities for as long as possible. The home help service is a core community service supporting, principally, older people to remain in their own homes, preventing admission to acute services, delaying or preventing admission to continuing residential care and facilitating early discharge from the acute sector to the community. The Health Service Executive has responsibility for the delivery of services such as mainstream home help, enhanced home care packages, meals on wheels and day or respite care services. The volume and types of health service to be delivered within the available funding for 2013 have been set out in the HSE's national service plan. My colleague, the Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly, approved and laid a copy of the plan before both Houses earlier this year. The HSE has a statutory responsibility to live within the budget voted by the Oireachtas.

This year the HSE has committed to maintaining community supports such as home help and home care packages at the levels planned for in 2012. This means that 10,870people will be in receipt of home care packages and that 10.3 millionhours of home help service will be provided, with 50,000 people receiving the service.

Our commitment to restore home help hours to 2012 levels has been delivered. The HSE service plan for 2013 provides €392 millionfor community based services for older people.

The target for home help hours in the HSE's 2012 plan was set at 10.7 million hours. This target was incorrect. During the period 2012 to 2013 a data problem was uncovered in one HSE region which had resulted in the figures being overstated. Put simply, for a period of time in one HSE region, service figures counted all of the members of a family instead of the individual in receipt of the service in the household. This inflated the 2012 figure but this error has now been corrected.

The correct original national target, therefore, for 2012 should have been 10.3 million hours. This is the target now also set for 2013. Home help hours targets have been profiled in order to focus service delivery on the times of peak demand within each region. Activity data is being monitored to ensure that the agreed targets are met relative to the agreed profiling and by year end. The HSE has delivered over 2.2 million home help hours for the first quarter of 2013. I understand that the information requested by Senator Kelly was supplied to him earlier this week.

I acknowledge that this involves a reduction of around 7% in hours nationally, from some 11.1 million hours delivered in 2011, to the current target of 10.3 million hours for 2013. However due to service efficiencies in this area, the number of people in receipt of home help service will only be reduced by 2%. It is important also to note that the HSE works to ensure that the impact of this reduction is minimised by ensuring that services are provided in the first instance for direct patient care. Decisions in relation to the provision of home help hours continue to be based on an assessment of individual needs.

There is no doubt that these are challenging times for the health services overall, including maintaining home care services in line with evolving resource pressures. The demand for these, which are highly regarded by those who receive the service, continues to grow as the population of older people expands and as many more older people with complex care needs are maintained at home. Notwithstanding this difficult financial environment we should not lose sight of the fact that just over €390 million is being provided this year for community services for older people and that about 100,000 older people will be receiving various community-based supports during 2013.