Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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571. To ask the Minister for Health when the process of bringing in an employment regulation order will commence for home care workers, given the recent confirmation by the Taoiseach. [2954/23]

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The Government is committed to addressing the workforce challenges which are negatively affecting the recruitment and retention of home support workers. For this reason, I established the cross departmental Strategic Workforce Advisory Group in March 2022 to examine, and formulate recommendations to address, the challenges in frontline carer roles in the home support and long term residential care sectors.

The Report of the Strategic Workforce Advisory Group on Home Carers and Nursing Home Healthcare Assistants was published on 15th October 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. I have strongly endorsed all of the Advisory Group’s recommendations and I am committed to their full implementation as a priority. Implementation of the recommendations will be overseen by a cross departmental Implementation Group, chaired by the Department of Health.

One of the Advisory Group’s recommendations is for an appropriate mechanism to reach agreement in the private and voluntary sector in respect of pay and pensions for home support workers and healthcare assistants to be investigated and reported on by an Expert Working Group. The Department of Health has ownership of this recommendation, which will be progressed as a priority. It is envisaged that the implementation of this recommendation will be informed by the lessons learnt from the establishment of a Joint Labour Committee for the early years’ service sector and the subsequent introduction of Employment Regulation Orders in this sector.

The Implementation Group will provide timelines for the implementation of each recommendation as soon as possible.