Health (Amendment) (Home Support Providers) Bill 2025: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-16 ============================================================ Kieran O'Donnell (FG), Limerick City I thank the members for their very constructive and heartfelt contributions. Virtually everyone spoke about a family member. There is probably no one out there who has not been in some way involved with family members, friends or relations of any form, in dealing with home support. To give context to my role, I have responsibility for older people in two Departments. The programme for Government outlines a commitment to design a statutory home care scheme, which I am utterly committed to doing, but I want to do it in a structured way. The first key element of that is to regulate the sector, which is unregulated at the moment. I acknowledge and compliment the officials here with me on the serious body of work they have done on it. In many cases, a lot of the work is hidden but it is a huge amount of serious work and I wanted to acknowledge that. I have no doubt but that we will discuss it in a lot more depth on Committee Stage. It is something I very much value. I wish to acknowledge again what everyone else has done here. I will perhaps do it in reverse order. I want to acknowledge the family carers; the people in their homes. All Senators spoke but in particular, Senator Collins spoke about her mother and what her dad is doing. If there is something I can do, we can maybe talk. That is complete dedication from the Senator's dad. He is giving her that commitment and that is to be admired but it has an impact on the carers as well. I want to acknowledge the professional home carers across the public, private and voluntary sectors. They are all doing great work and that is hugely important. What we are doing here is regulating the sector. It is the first step in designing a statutory home care scheme. We have to have a scheme that is based around need. We have to look at assessing that need. We need to put in place a service that serves people and is sustainable. It is something that, in my role, I am working on with the officials. What I would like to do now is address, as well as I can, the particular issues raised by Senators. Senator Byrne made reference to demographics. We have an ageing population and we want to give more and more people the option of remaining at home. It is choice and for me, it is all about choice. As people get older, we want people to be in better health condition now than they may have been a couple of years ago. Home care is a huge element to that; meals on wheels is another element. It is across the spectrum, including nursing homes and acute hospitals. That is what we are looking to build into it. Senator Boyhan raised a number of points. As for where safeguarding overall is, it was something I felt very strongly about when I came into the role because it is a key element in regard to older people in particular. The first thing I wanted was a commitment in the programme for Government to bring forward the first ever adult safeguarding national policy. We published that last December and the Government approved that policy. It equally approved us to proceed to bring forward legislation. We are working actively on it at the moment. I want us to bring that legislation forward towards the end of the year in regard to a general scheme. Once again, we must get it right. The next issue Senator Boyhan rose came up everywhere. I am doing a body of work with the HSE at the moment around home support delivered by the HSE. I want to bring down the waiting lists. They are coming down but not at the rate I would like. The HSE has been given funding and, in regard to a reference Senator Tully made, there is no embargo on recruitment. The HSE has been given funding to recruit 257 additional home support and HSE home care workers, along with recruiting a number of people for vacancies. That is actively under way. It is something I want to see. I meet the HSE regularly on this and I very much want to see a structured approach. Senator Costello made reference to it being an essential service. She referred to her own parents and the issues around protecting vulnerable people. There is a number of components. Regulating home support is hugely important because it will give that certainty. I covered the points Senator Tully raised in sequence including, once again, the home support. While I think Senator Stephenson has gone, that dovetails into the key points Senator Clonan raised. When I came in, I wanted to look at what the background was. It is effectively less than four but it is three or less. It was looked at as a proportionate measure. I happened to be in Wales for St. Patrick's Day and I met with the Minister in that area, along with her officials. At the time it was the Minister for Children and Social Care, Dawn Bowden. I went through, in depth, what they have done. In Wales, they have had it up and running for a long number of years. In their case, it is four or less. In our case, it would be three or less. The main reason that was done was proportionality. It is in this Bill as well. We are not including personal assistance, PA, services. The Department of children wished that PA services would not be included so we are not including them. If it wishes, we will but for the moment, that is its decision. PA services, in many cases, will be delivered by that lower number. We want a standard of care and it is something we will be looking at. The proportionate model was done in a way to ensure that it worked in practice. Senator Collins made reference to the human aspect. It is something I am working on with the HSE. I want to see the HSE recruiting more staff. Senator Collins made reference to rural areas in many cases, and these are the areas I want to tackle with regard to bringing down the numbers. There are many areas of the country where there are not waiting lists. There are other areas where there are and I want to do a concentrated body of work. It is not just about putting the legislation in place. It is also about doing the day-to-day work, along with the officials. Senator O'Reilly has gone. On the legislation itself, we are now proceeding to Committee Stage with Members and I really look forward to the contributions. There will then be regulations put in place in regard to how it works in practice. There will be a lead-in period. We have gone through this legislation in great depth and I think it will add to the quality, consistency and regulation of home support for people living at home, particularly for the service users themselves but also for their families and to give that level of assurance. What we want to do is progress it. It is the first step in designing a statutory home care scheme, which we are actively working on. It is something I am looking to bring forward as quickly as possible but I want to do it in a way where we have a structured approach, so that we get that something that is very much sustainable and is based around need in particular. I hope that covers all the aspects. We can obviously go through the various sections of the Bill in great depth when we have Committee Stage, which will be next week. I thank the Seanad for facilitating it. This is about independent regulation of a sector that up to now has not been regulated. I think it is something that everybody can collectively agree on. I look forward to further engagement on Committee Stage and I thank Senators for their contributions. --- 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