Health (Amendment) (Home Support Providers) Bill 2025: Committee and Remaining Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-23 ============================================================ Kieran O'Donnell (FG), Limerick City The Senator’s amendment has been ruled out of order but I will speak to the section and the particular points he raised. I looked at this in great depth because I wanted to cover everything. I will read out the note and then I will cover a number of points thereafter. I thank Senator Clonan for raising this matter. All exemptions included in the Bill have been carefully considered to ensure that there is no adverse impact on services that are not intended to be captured under the current regulatory framework. In relation to the matter the Senator raised, section 69B(2)(a) provides that where a person provides a home support service to fewer than four people, they are exempt from the requirement to register. That is in the Bill. The exclusion was carefully considered in order to ensure that the regulatory burden placed on providers was proportionate to the size of the service being provided. These small services are typically single operators working on a one-to-one basis with service users. As I said on Second Stage of this Bill, I was in Wales for St. Patrick’s Day and took the opportunity to meet its minister with responsibility for this area. In Wales, the regulation is four persons or fewer. In our case, it is fewer than four persons. The exemption also seeks to exempt personal assistance services where service users directly engage with a personal assistant. These arrangements allow the service user to direct the way in which their services are provided, which upholds the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD. This exemption is further supported by 69B(2)(c), which exempts providers who have service arrangements with the HSE to deliver personal assistance services. The Department of Children, Disability and Equality is progressing a broader programme of work to develop a vision and strategy of specialist disability services for 2030 that will include considerations, particularly around governance arrangements, across the disability sector more broadly. That Department is also advancing the development of a policy framework on supports for community living, which will include consideration on the role of the personal assistant. The outcome of this work will inform future policy and legislative considerations for disability services. The home support authorisation scheme is how the HSE commissions tendered home support from approved providers. The scheme opens periodically to allow prospective new providers to apply to become approved. The scheme requires providers to meet certain criteria. This legislation seeks to introduce regulations for home support services. Matters relating to HSE-commissioned home support services are to be further evaluated during the design of the statutory home support scheme. It is committed to in the programme for Government. We are going to look at that in depth. The Senator raised a specific point about personalised budgets. I have no doubt that the Senator has a greater knowledge than I of this area. It is something that is personal to him and he understands it well. A personalised budget demonstrator pilot was established in 2019 on a cost-neutral basis. In May 2025, the demonstrator pilot commenced its evaluation phase, which is expected to conclude shortly. It is being led by the National Disability Authority. The evaluation will provide insights into the barriers and facilitators to rolling out personalised budgets on a large scale. It will, therefore, inform next steps. There are, therefore, personalised budgets within the disability sector. Under the pilot scheme people with disabilities can get a budget and determine the person they want to engage to do that service for them. To clarify the point, the Bill here just deals with the regulation specifically. I wanted to look at this and to be totally without any form of ambiguity. This legislation deals with regulation. The issue of how home support is commissioned by the HSE is something we are going to look at in greater depth as part of our design of a statutory home care scheme. We give that commitment. It is not even a commitment but something we are going to do. There is that pilot project for personalised budgets for people with disabilities and an evaluation run by the National Disability Authority. That is due to conclude shortly and we await the outcome of that review. I hope that brings clarity to the points the Senator raises. --- 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/2026-06-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:05+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-23