John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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18. To ask the Minister for Health his plans for a more flexible funding system to limit the delays being experienced by vulnerable older persons on waiting lists for home supports in view of the changing demographics in the provision of home care supports and intensive home care packages and the funding for these supports being finite; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28405/18]

Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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The Government is committed to promoting care in the community so that people can continue to live with confidence, security and dignity in their own homes for as long as possible. To support this, we plan to establish a new statutory scheme for home care services.  The potential for changes to the funding system for home support will be considered as part of the process of developing the new scheme. 

I am happy to say that we reached an important milestone in this process earlier this week when I published the report of the findings of the public consultation on home care.  The consultation process took place last year and approximately 2,600 submissions were received. The report includes a number of interesting points made by respondents in relation to innovative funding models and is available from the Department’s website.  The findings will now be used help to inform the design of the new home care scheme. 

I am committed to progressing the development of the new scheme as quickly as possible.  However, this is a complex undertaking and will require a significant amount of detailed preparatory work. 

In the meantime, the Department and the HSE are continuing to improve existing services, including in 2018 the introduction of a single funding stream for home support services. Also in 2018, an additional 754,000 hours will be delivered, bringing the total to over 17m hours, along with 235 Intensive Home Care Packages.