Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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141. To ask the Minister for Health when the Cross-Departmental Strategic Workforce Advisory Group on Home Carers and Nursing Home Health Care Assistants will complete its work; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37193/22]

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The shortage of home carers and nursing home healthcare assistants has been a great concern of mine and my Department. Following a call for submissions, I established a cross-departmental Strategic Workforce Advisory Group to examine factors affecting the care sector workforce in March of this year.

The remit of the Group is to identify—and formulate recommendations to address—strategic workforce challenges in the home-support and nursing home sectors. Accordingly, the Group is examining issues such as the recruitment, retention, training, career-development, and pay and conditions of front-line carers in these sectors so that solutions can be found.

To date the Group has met five times with the most recent meeting being held last week. The Group’s deliberations have been informed by a structured programme of stakeholder-engagement consisting of a series of bilateral meetings and a facilitated workshop. Engagement with key stakeholders in the home-support and nursing home sectors continues to inform the Group’s exploration of the issues arising.

In addition, the work of the Group will be informed by an evidence review of the role, function, and supply of home-support workers in four European countries, which the Department of Health has commissioned from the Health Research Board. This will provide insight into home-support workers’ employment-conditions internationally.

A report outlining the Group’s key findings and recommendations will be submitted to me by September 2022.