Health (Amendment) (Home Support Providers) Bill 2025: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-16 ============================================================ Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel The Social Democrats support this Bill to provide for the regulation of home support services. The statutory right to home care is something that we, as a party, have long advocated for. I acknowledge that this regulatory framework plays an important role within that. The legislation is long overdue. The current situation whereby home care services remain unregulated is simply not tenable. The absence of any oversight, minimum standards or regulations for the sector has undoubtedly put vulnerable service users at risk. It is shocking to think that at present if a provider is not receiving State funding, there is absolutely no obligation for them to comply with HSE standards and policies. Although this is a crucial if long-overdue step, it also does not deliver what is badly needed and that is a statutory home support scheme, as promised by the Government nearly a decade ago in January 2017. We know there is a growing unmet need for home care services in this State among older people and people with a disability, with the demand for home support far outstripping supply. The current inequitable model for long-term care in Ireland incentivises nursing home care, thereby denying many older people the choice and right to remain at home for as long as possible. The lack of home care provision by the State risks forcing individuals into unnecessary or premature admission into hospital or residential care undermining the Sláintecare vision to provide person-centred care at home and within the community. It also breaches Ireland's obligations under the UN Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Urgent action and investment are needed to tackle the scale of the unmet need in this area, which we all know is only going to grow in part due to our ageing population. Waiting lists are already sky-high, and we are seeing real regional disparity in access, particularly for rural communities outside of Dublin and the commuter belt, which are not seeing the benefits from increased funding and workforce measures. The warnings in terms of increased demand are stark. A 2025 ESRI report found that between 2022 and 2040, annual home care hours would need to increase from 28.7 million to between 45 million and 55 million hours. We know that there is a huge reliance on the private sector with the ESRI estimating that over 7.6 million home support hours were privately purchased in 2022, accounting for over a quarter, 26%, of all home support hours provided that year, which reflects the over-reliance on the private sector. Turning to the Government's long-awaited statutory home support scheme, when can we expect the delivery of this key programme for Government promise, which is also part of the Sláintecare reform? This has been promised again and again, but we have still seen no delivery and no concrete timeline for that. I will briefly acknowledge the work of our care workers. We know the deepening crisis the sector is facing in terms of workforce recruitment and retention. This is of significant concern given the rising demand that we will see in the coming years. It is thus vital that we properly value and compensate care workers starting with paying them a real living wage and the payment of mileage, which is particularly pertinent for rural workers. The recruitment crisis is compounded by the cost-of-living crisis. We have heard directly from Age Action Ireland that a lot fewer migrant care workers are coming to work, with the housing shortage and rising costs of living deterring would-be low-paid care staff. Even outside big cities, it is just too expensive to live in Ireland. It is a short-sighted outlook to undervalue and underinvest in care and our care workers both in terms of those paid and unpaid, who through their service make such a vital contribution to the State and society and we should treat them accordingly. Returning to the Bill, I reiterate the concerns of my colleagues regarding its provision for the exemption from regulation of service providers with three or less clients. The pre-legislative scrutiny report recommended that all State-funded services should be covered by this legislation and the associated regulations. On Report Stage in the Dáil, my colleague, Deputy Rice, noted the Social Democrats' concerns that this proposed approach could provide a potential loophole for unscrupulous employers who could exploit it to create a series of small providers to shirk their regulatory obligations. What protections and safeguards will be in place to avoid that very thing happening? We proposed an amendment in the Dáil which would have effectively closed this loophole by allowing only single operators to be exempt from regulations and requiring those providing care to more than one client to seek an exemption from HIQA. This is something I might consider bringing forward on Committee Stage. --- 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/2026-06-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:03+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-16