Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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Question 156: To ask the Minister for Health and Children if her attention has been drawn to the fact that elderly and disabled persons have difficulty in getting a reasonable level of home help or home care resulting in many of them going into full-time care with a resultant higher cost to the State; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [31905/08]

Máire Hoctor (Tipperary North, Fianna Fail)
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The Government has committed very significant investment in recent years to develop both community-based and residential services for older people. Additional funding of just over €400 million was provided under Budgets 2006 and 2007, of which €190 million was ear-marked for community-based services such as Homecare Packages, Home-Helps, Day Care, Respite and Meals on Wheels. In this context, the Home Help Service nationally is a well established and successful component of overall strategy to enable older people to remain in their own homes and communities for as long as possible. The development of the service, to address increasing demands, over the period 2006 to 2008 shows, for example:

€211 million revenue funding provision, including over €55 million for new service developments.

In excess of 11 million Home-Help hours were provided by the HSE in 2007.

Numbers benefiting increased from just over 41,000 in 2006 to around 54,000 clients at present.

Total Home-Help hours increased from just over 9 million hours in 2006 to over 11 million hours expected this year, i.e. an increase of 22%.

In addition to the above, the Home Care Package Initiative formally commenced in 2006, following a pilot programme in 2005. Home Care Packages are an additional support over and above existing mainstream community services and are used to maintain an older person at home via additional supports and therapy services. They are designed to be flexible and are particularly targeted at those at risk of admission to long-term care, inappropriate admission to acute hospital or requiring discharge home from an acute hospital. Funding of €110 million was provided over the years 2006 and 2007 to roll-out the Home Care Package programme. This has resulted in just over 4,300 new packages introduced to the system which now benefits approximately 11,000 people per annum.

As the Deputy will be aware, operational responsibility for the management and delivery of health and personal social services was assigned to the Health Service Executive under the Health Act 2004. Therefore, the Executive is the appropriate body to consider the particular matters raised by the Deputy. My Department has therefore requested the Parliamentary Affairs Division of the Executive to arrange to have these investigated and to have a reply issued directly to the Deputy.