Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I hope to introduce the legislation in the first quarter of 2021 and I believe it will be well-received across both Houses and by all Members.

Our plan is to deliver a statutory home care scheme by 2022. A couple of key enablers have to be put in place first. The first is the single assessment tool, interRAI, which provides an assessment of the person that needs to enter home care or nursing home care. Currently, the assessments vary from county to county. We will roll out a pilot programme early next year across four different areas in the country. By the end of 2021, we will have a statutory assessment of need for everybody throughout the country. I have secured funding for 128 assessors and that will be rolled out by the end of next year. We have also received funding to put in place an IT system to support this. Those are the two key enablers and I hope the scheme will be up and running by 2022.