Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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631. To ask the Minister for Health if he will detail the current unmet need with regard to home care provision; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3301/23]

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The Government is committed to supporting people with care needs to continue to live independently in their homes and communities for as long as possible. As of November 2022, 19,038,523 home support hours had been delivered nationally over the preceding year and, as at the end of November 2022, there were 56,429 people in receipt of the service. However, there were also 3,240 new applicants who had been approved for funding but who were awaiting supports; 2,819 people already receiving supports but not the full number of hours recommended; and 7 people waiting for funding for home support.

Within this context, the Government is committed to addressing the critical shortage of care workers in Ireland as an urgent priority. 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.

I can confirm that implementation of the recommendations has commenced with the announcement on 16th December 2022 of the Government’s authorisation of 1,000 employment permits for non EU/EEA home support workers, as recommended by the Advisory Group. This promises to significantly reduce the shortage of home support workers in the immediate future. I have contacted the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, which has oversight of the recruitment of non EU/EEA home support workers, for direct reply to you in respect of this initiative.

Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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632. To ask the Minister for Health what actions he has taken to establish a commission to examine care and supports for older people, which is a commitment in the programme for Government; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3302/23]

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The Government is committed to supporting healthy, positive ageing and ensuring that older persons can continue to live independently in their homes and communities for as long as possible.

The Programme for Government(2020) commits to the establishment of a commission on care that will ‘assess how we care for older people and examine alternatives to meet the diverse needs of our older citizens’, learning the lessons from COVID-19.

In 2022 preliminary desk research was undertaken within my Department in preparation for the establishment of a commission on care. In 2023 the scoping and planning for the commission on care will be further advanced as a priority.