Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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Question 274: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children the reason she has under-resourced the public home help service while at the same time subsidised private companies providing home help services through the Health Service Executive and through the recently introduced €1,000 home care grant. [15372/06]

Seán Power (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy is aware, additional funding of €150 million was allocated to services for older people and palliative care in the 2006 budget. Of this, an extra €33 million was allocated to the home help service, €30 million of which is provided for 2006 to deliver 1.75 million home help hours. A total of €55 million was also allocated to home care packages, €30 million for 2006 and a further €25 million for 2007, with an additional 2,000 packages to be delivered by the end of this year.

Home care packages may consist of a mixture of grants, contracted care services, therapeutic input and equipment and other such community services to facilitate the older person to remain living in his or her own home. These packages are tailored to the needs of the individual and may or may not consist of a grant paid directly to the person. The packages are based on the level of need as well as the financial circumstances of the applicant. Therefore, the type and amount of the package a person receives can vary from one individual to another.

Home care, including the home help service, is delivered through the HSE in partnership with a range of providers including the Health Service Executive itself, voluntary groups and the private sector. This has long since been a policy regarding home care and there are no plans to privatise the home help service or give priority to private companies over public or other home care providers.

The most important factor in delivering home care and home help is not who provides the service, but that an appropriate level of service is delivered in as flexible a manner as possible which is highly responsive to the real needs of the individual, and there is no reason private providers should not work in partnership with the HSE to this end, as they have been doing in the past and will continue to do.