Care, Supports and Enhanced Provision of Services for Older People: Motion
Seanad Éireann — 2025-03-05
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Seán Kyne (FG), Cultural and Educational Panel

I move:
“That Seanad Éireann:
acknowledges:
- the contribution that older people have made to Irish society through raising families, their work, both paid and voluntary and their charitable endeavours;
- that Irish people are living longer and that this presents opportunities and challenges and that living longer is one of humanity’s great success stories;
- the desire for older people to be active and involved in their communities;
- that the potential of our older persons is being unintentionally blocked by poor policy and that ageism, loneliness and undetected treatable conditions are widespread;
- that Ireland was the first country to be designated age-friendly status by the World Health Organisation in 2019;
- the work of charities assisting and advocating for older persons;
- the work of the independent Commission on Care for Older People;
- that the Programme for Government committed to:
- publish, resource, and implement a National Action Plan for long-term care of our elderly;
- continue to significantly increase the income disregards for carer’s allowance in each Budget with a view to phasing out the means test during the lifetime of the Government;
calls on Government to:
- support older people to live at home and in their own communities by implementing the Programme for Government commitments on older persons;
- design a Statutory Homecare Scheme to allow people to stay in their own home for as long as possible;
- increase home care hours;
- rollout the Care and Repair Scheme nationally;
- increase the Housing Adaptation Grant;
- increase funding for the national Meals on Wheels network and develop a plan to ensure there are supported providers in every town in the country;
- expand the Enhanced Community Care programme;
- enhance our network of day centres
- continue to support Community Healthcare Networks;
- increase support for carers – providing training, establishing clearer pathways to services, and improving access to respite;
- fully fund the Carer’s Guarantee;
- continue to implement the local age-friendly strategies enabling the voice of older people through the Older People’s Councils;
- continue to work with The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing to support ageing well in Ireland;
- continue to support and enhance the Go for Life national programme for sport and physical activity for older people in partnership with the HSE and the Local Sports Partnerships;
calls on Government, in recognising dementia supports, to:
- work with the National Dementia Office and key stakeholders to develop a National Dementia Registry to map services, identify needs and the delivery of equitable access to services;
- establish 20 new dementia-specific day care centres;
- include dementia specific provisions across all new community nursing hospitals;
- increase ringfenced home care hours, and funding for dementia intensive home care packages;
- double funding for dementia day care at home;
- double the number of dementia advisers;
- rollout more Memory Assessment Support Services teams;
- rollout more early age dementia supports;
calls on Government, in supporting the strengthening of our nursing home sector, to:
- increase funding for the Fair Deal Scheme and ensure the waiting list does not exceed four weeks;
- build more public nursing home beds;
- publish the National Treatment Purchase Fund review of pricing systems in early 2025 and work towards an equitable funding model for the nursing home sector;
- provide a career pathway for healthcare assistants.”

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-03-05/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:35+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-03-05