Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Senator O'Brien proposed an amendment to the Order of Business, that No. 13 be taken before No. 2. It is with regard to publishing a Bill. I have no problem with this, and I agree to the amendment.

I agree with him that there have been difficulties with the Fair Deal scheme. I understand that on 20 January there were 763 delayed discharges nationally, of which 368 were in the Dublin teaching hospitals. A focus on these delayed discharges is key to efficient patient flow, and significant resources are being applied to provide the best possible mix of support and services. The Government committed an additional €25 million in the budget for 2015 to address delayed discharges. This has resulted in 300 extra approvals under the nursing home support scheme. The waiting time for approved funding has dropped from 17 weeks, which it was before Christmas, to 11 weeks, as the Senator mentioned. A total of 50 additional short-stay beds have been sourced from the private sector. A total of 400 home care packages were approved in the greater Dublin area for 2015. All requirements for home care are being met across the target hospitals, with 80 home care packages currently deployed, and the number is increasing daily. A further 386 transitional beds were approved across all acute hospitals by the week ending 23 January. These are the transitional care beds put in place to address the surge in delayed discharges which the Senator mentioned. There are no significant delays associated with the provision of home care.

This is monitored daily. As of October 2014, some 8.5 million home care hours had been provided to 46,608 people and 13,000 home care packages had been approved to enable older people to remain living in their communities. In addition to these measures, the HSE has allocated 165 transitional care beds to support Dublin's academic teaching hospitals, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital and Naas General Hospital. As of 26 January 2015, all of these beds had been assessed.

In light of the recent surge in activity in emergency departments, the HSE is considering the potential of spare capacity for short-stay beds in the private nursing home sector. The HSE is profiling where the extra potential capacity is and matching the locations to the patients. It is on target to bring about additional bed streams at Mount Carmel Hospital on a phased basis from the end of March.

There has been significant progress. We have asked the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, to attend the Seanad to discuss the matter further. She has agreed, but it will be March before she is in a position to do so. I hope that the situation will have improved significantly by then.