Health (Amendment) (Home Support Providers) Bill 2025: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-01-20 ============================================================ Marie Sherlock (LAB), Dublin Central I apologise. We all understand if there is an informal arrangement in place for looking after a relative or a neighbour, where it is only one person, but it is a business if a person is looking after three or fewer clients. I do not want us to be in a place in a number of years time where we are talking about the disaster of not regulating these entities. We are talking about people's lives. We are talking about people in a very vulnerable situation. In some situations they may not have very strong family support or they may have no family support around them at all. Who are we trying to safeguard here? We are trying to safeguard the person being cared for in their home and indeed the worker as well. That is critically important. To be frank, some of the workers involved last year were thrown under a bus. They were scapegoated and blamed for what took place in the nursing homes when, arguably, management and the owners got off scot-free. I have serious concerns about the exemptions. The other key concern is the classification or designation as a personal assistance service. There is a fine line between the two. I am worried that we would see organisations trying to classify themselves in that space and then being exempt from this legislation. At the end of the day we want to prevent abuse and exploitation of the person who is being cared for, and we also want to look after the worker who is providing that service. On the market and the cost of regulation, I spoke about the larger for-profit organisations that are effectively buying up voluntary and community-based organisations at the moment. There must be provision for the administrative burden in the funding provided to these organisations, through the tendering process. My last point relates to HIQA. In 2024, HIQA estimated that it would cost €1.1 million per annum to introduce licensing. In the first instance, we must get a commitment from the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, that the comprehensive costs of licensing will be covered by the Department. I am sure it is much more than €1.1 million now. I have had serious concerns about the HIQA inspection regime, in particular with regard to nursing homes. We articulated that last year. We accept there has been an increase in the number of inspections and that is to be welcomed, but as I articulated earlier, there are concerns about how HIQA is going to enforce the licensing and how it is going to inspect and access people's homes. Ultimately, if licensing is not going to be a superficial act of these Houses of the Oireachtas, and if it is to mean something, we need to have a clear sense of what the enforcement framework is going to look like. In regard to nursing home registration, HIQA had to go to the District Court to seek the cancellation of a licence. I believe we need to do something stronger here. HIQA needs to be invested with greater powers to cancel the licence of a provider if wrongdoing is found. A much clearer message must be sent to the public that much swifter and more comprehensive action will be taken by HIQA if there are concerns. Right now, there is a belief among the public that we do not have an enforcement regime that will speedily respond when there are concerns and that too much time is taken. The reality is that abuses may continue to take place in the time it takes to make an application to the District Court. We must take more immediate action. We very much welcome this Bill. We want to see it move at a timely pace through this House and on to the Seanad. We need to see a substantial beefing up of the substance and content of the Bill for us to have the confidence that we will have a comprehensive and rigorous licensing, inspection and enforcement regime for home care support in this country. --- 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/dail/2026-01-20/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-20