Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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591. To ask the Minister for Health if his attention has been drawn to challenges in recruiting persons to fill home help hours as in persons to work these hours for persons allocated hours; and if he will engage with colleagues across Government in order to address this challenge. [43267/21]

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The Department of Health is cognisant of the challenges associated with recruiting and retaining staff in the home help sector and is committed to working across Government and with relevant stakeholders to ameliorate these issues. The Programme for Government committed to establishing a Workforce Planning Expert Unit to work with the education sectors, regulators, and professional bodies to improve the availability of health professionals and reform their training to support integrated care across the entire health service.

A Strategic Workforce Planning (SWFP) Unit has been established within the Department of Health to achieve these aims. They key objective of the Unit is the development of an Integrated Health Workforce Planning Strategy and Workforce Planning Model in consultation with key stakeholders and in line with the Programme for Government commitment to define health workforce planning needs across the entire health sector, including both public and private health care provision, into the future.