Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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110. To ask the Minister for Health his plans and the timeframe for dealing with the shortfall in the budget for home care packages that means that the HSE cannot provide supports for persons in need of home care in some areas and this situation has been the same since June 2016; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [30617/16]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I am pleased to say that overall funding for services for older people has increased to €765 million in 2017 - an increase of €82 million since the HSE’s 2016 Service Plan. This has focused on additional funding for home care in particular and is aimed at allowing people to continue to live in their own homes and at facilitating discharge of older people from acute hospitals.

Since the Government took Office, we have significantly increased the funding available for home care. An additional €40m (including €10m as part of the forthcoming Winter initiative) already provided in 2016 represented an increase of over 13% in the total funding available, and means that the number of Home Care Packages provided this year will increase from 15,450 to 15,800 and home help hours from 10.4 million to 10.57 million.

The Winter Initiative will also provide another €1.4m for home care this year which will provide a further 650 Packages by year's end. These will be targeted at 10 specific hospitals to allow people to be discharged home quickly. Over 2016 the number of Home care Packages being provided will have increased by 1,000.

In 2017, €14.6m of the Winter Initiative will be to fund home care, and there will be another €3.8m to maintain existing levels of service and €10m for new developments. Details of the services to be provided with these funds will be set out in the coming weeks in the forthcoming HSE 2017 National Service Plan.

Demand for home care has increased significantly in recent years and this is a continuing trend. This is due to a number of factors including long-run demographic trends, an increased desire on the part of many older people to stay in their own homes and communities for as long as possible and continuing requirements to support discharges from acute hospitals. The resources available for home care came under severe pressure in recent years because of the wider economic environment, and this, coupled with the other factors that I have already mentioned means that we have a good deal of ground to make up. I think we have made a very substantive start to that process but it will take some time to get to where we would ideally want to be in terms of home care services.