Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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2237. To ask the Minister for Health further to Parliamentary Question No. 460 of 20 March 2025, of the 1744.75 hours unallocated, the number of persons this figure represents; the number of these people who have no homecare hours allocated to date; and the number that are additional hours to care hours already provided by the service. [45254/25]

Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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As this is an operational matter, I have asked the Health Service Executive to respond directly to the Deputy as soon as possible.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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2238. To ask the Minister for Health further to Parliamentary Question No. 460 of 20 March 2025, when geographical and carer limitations are mentioned in regard to filling home care hours, if this means there is an issue with people in a more rural setting; if so, the actions being taken by her to encourage these hours be taken up by potential carers. [45255/25]

Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Improving access to home support is a priority for the Government. The overall budget for home support in 2025 will be circa €838 million. This is the largest allocation ever for home support. That is an increase of nearly €122 million on Budget 2024 and an increase of over 70% when compared to the 2020 budget of €487m. This increased investment for 2025 means we will now be able to provide approximately 24 million home support hours to support people across the country to continue to live in their own home, supporting circa 60,000 people by the year end.

Although the delivery of home support hours has increased nationally, it is important to note that the demand for home support provision has increased in some areas of the country with the demand for home support anticipated to continue to increase into the future due to population growth and increasing numbers of people living to over 80 years of age. As demand for home support services have increased across the country it is acknowledged that waiting lists for home support services in some areas have also increased with the availability of carers being noted as a challenge in the sector. 

The HSE has taken a number of steps to encourage more people into this career, by highlighting and promoting the career opportunities of home support workers in the sector, by developing a career pathway for Health Care Assistant home support workers on the HSE Career Hub platform, which currently has over 51,000 registrants. The HSE Career Hub provides information on the training requirements and benefits associated with working for the HSE as a Home care worker as well as providing updates on job opportunities for suitable candidates.

In the Department of Health work is continuing to explore options to increase the effectiveness of home support and to address the waiting lists observed across the country. Among the initiatives that will be explored is the use of assistive technologies to aid home support.

This work builds on previous work undertaken by the Department as part of the cross-departmental Strategic Workforce Advisory Group (SWAG) which was established in March 2022 which set out to examine the challenges in frontline carer roles in the home support and long-term residential care sectors and contained 16 recommendations to address them. The implementation of these recommendations is underway; with many significant reforms having been implemented.  

Under the SWAG, a new and improved HSE Home Support Authorisation Scheme (tender) has been in place since August 2023, for payments to approved private and voluntary providers to deliver home support on behalf of the HSE. This delivers on commitments for sectoral reform such as payment for travel time for home support providers, paying carers the National Living Wage at a minimum, and bringing legacy rates in line with revised rates of funding. 

These measures  have been taken to support and improve working conditions for staff currently working in the area and to improve the working conditions for future staff working in this sector. We in Government remain committed to addressing the gaps in home support provision nationally.