Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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313. To ask the Minister for Health the measures that will be implemented at an early date to address the critical shortage of homecare workers which is causing severe problems in many areas with delays in providing home support for persons requiring such assistance, and also causing delayed hospital discharges; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [58588/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Addressing the shortage of care-workers in Ireland is an urgent priority for the Government. To this end, I established the cross-departmental Strategic Workforce Advisory Group in March 2022 to examine, and formulate recommendations to address, the challenges in front-line carer roles in the home-support and long-term residential care sectors. Working closely with key stakeholders, the Group examined the recruitment, retention, training, career-development, and pay and conditions of care-workers.

The Report of the Strategic Workforce Advisory Group on Home Carers and Nursing Home Healthcare Assistantswas published on 15^thOctober 2022. Providing an overview of the work of the Group and its key findings, the report presents a suite of 16 recommendations spanning the areas of areas of recruitment, pay and conditions of employment, barriers to employment, training and professional development, sectoral reform, and monitoring and implementation.

In the latest figures available, as of 22 November 2022, the HSE reported there were 599 Delayed Transfer of Care of which 96 people were waiting on home supports. At the end of September 2022, 16.08 million home support hours have been delivered to 56,490 clients in the community. I am acutely aware that there are strategic workforce challenges in the sector, however priority is given to those assessed in acute hospitals, who can return home with supports.

Finally, I strongly endorse all of the Strategic Workforce Advisory Group's recommendations and can confirm that work towards their implementation has commenced. I will be closely monitoring this implementation on an on-going basis to ensure that the recommendations are enacted in a full and timely manner.