Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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49. To ask the Minister for Health the reason CHO 1 missed its target for home support hours during the first nine months of 2018; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [50698/18]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Home Support Service is a core service for older people and is highly valued by service users, their families and by the HSE. It provides supports which assist older people to live independently in their own homes for longer and enables large numbers of people to return home following acute hospital admission who otherwise would remain in hospital or would be admitted to long stay residential care.

In 2018 the HSE began streamlining home care services by introducing a single funded home support service. This brings together the funding for home help and standard home care packages which now operates as a single home support service from 2018 onwards.

Performance activity across the country is on target, however there is some variation across the Community Healthcare Organisations. It should be noted as clients become more dependent, the need for non-core hours increases as more hours are required on Sunday or bank holidays. These hours cost more than core hours and can impact on activity levels.

At the end of September CHO 1 was about 8.5% below its planned target, providing approximately 1.23 million home support hours against a target of 1.35 million hours. While performance activity is currently below target for CHO 1 the HSE has advised that it expects that activity levels will be closer to the target by year end subject to remaining within the funding allocated.