Home Help Service Dail Éireann — 2026-01-28 ============================================================ Kieran O'Donnell (FG), Limerick City I thank Deputy John Paul O’Shea for raising this important matter. The Government is committed to supporting older people in Ireland and improving their access to healthcare services in the community. Budget 2026 saw an increase of approximately €215 million to maintain and enhance services for older people, resulting in a total allocation of over €3 billion for the first time. This includes a further substantial increase for home support services to bring the 2026 budget allocation to over €900 million, more than doubling the investment since 2018. The target for the delivery of home support hours has increased accordingly, from 24 million hours in 2025 to 26.7 million hours for 2026. That is an increase of 1.7 million hours. In the Cork area, provisional figures from the HSE indicate that over 2.2 million hours of home support were delivered up to the end of November 2025. This represents an increase of 6.5% compared to the number of hours delivered in the same period in 2024. There were 6,022 people receiving a home support service at the end of November 2025, compared to 5,796 at the end of November 2024, which is a 3.9% increase. The waiting list for home support services in this area at the end of December 2025 stood at 915 people. Of these, 547 people were waiting for new packages, while 368 people were waiting for additional hours. The HSE has stated that it is acutely aware that there are capacity issues across both direct and indirect provision of home support throughout the region. The HSE is committed to attracting additional staff and increasing its capacity to deliver support to as many clients as possible. The HSE is running ongoing recruitment campaigns as well as supporting the professional development of staff working in the area. HSE south west has advised that recruitment efforts in the Cork region are ongoing with a recruitment campaign currently live to recruit healthcare assistant staff in Cork and Kerry. Additionally, HSE south west has advised that dedicated recruitment co-ordinators for healthcare assistant, home support, run campaigns throughout the year. In the six months from August 2025 to January 2026, 29 healthcare assistants, home support, have been hired in the Cork region. More broadly, addressing the home support waiting list is a priority for the Government. Improving these lists requires more support and more workers at a time where there are international challenges with recruiting healthcare workers. The strategic workforce advisory group on home carers and nursing home healthcare assistants was set up in 2022 to address the challenges relating to front-line carer roles in the home support and long-term residential care sector. Work continues to deliver on the recommendations of this group, including a survey on the experience of healthcare assistants, which is due to be launched shortly. This will inform development of future target interventions to increase recruitment retention in the sector. I will take this matter up with the HSE, at national and local level. I have already held meetings with representatives of the HSE. I will meet with the HSE personnel involved in home support in Cork to see if we can reduce waiting lists and waiting times. For those who are waiting for them, home support packages are hugely important. The home support providers Bill has just passed the Second Stage. The purpose of this legislation is to improve the regulation of the sector. More importantly, it is the first step in ensuring that home care will be provided in the context of a statutory home care scheme. On the particular issue that the Deputy has raised in respect of Cork, I will follow up directly with my officials and the HSE in Cork. I will also follow up with the HSE nationally. --- 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/2026-01-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-28