The Senator has raised three valid points, including the fact that three reports were commissioned but only two were referred to. She mentioned Professor John Bradley's report, which I will certainly raise with the Department of Transport. She is correct in that it is an approximate date for the publishing of the draft report. The Minister expects to receive a draft report of the review shortly. The intention is to publish it as soon as possible thereafter in co-operation with the Department for Infrastructure in N…

I thank the Senator for raising this matter. I am delighted to be in the Seanad to discuss the issue of CAMHS waiting lists in the Senator's community healthcare organisation, CHO, and nationally because it is something on which I have put a huge focus. The Government and I remain committed to the development of all aspects of mental health services. As the Senator will be aware, the mental health budget for 2023 is in excess of €1.2 billion, which is another record budget for mental health services, and a continue…

I reiterate that there will be three new CAMHS e-mental health pilot sites nationally. One has been identified for CHO 3 and the Limerick area. I have seen this model work well in the Roscommon area. It is one of the key recommendations of the Maskey report, which resulted from the situation that occurred in south Kerry. As the Senator will be aware, an audit and a review are under way now. The audit concerns the HSE. We are auditing all 73 CAMHS teams in respect of access to them, whether they are meeting their st…

The construct of the no-confidence motion put forward by Solidarity-People Before Profit leads us here today. This is a motion that is disingenuous and wide of the mark. The fantasy it purports is of the removal from office of one of our most capable Ministers one year into a ten-year strategy, which has seen some 28,000 units built, which is a fact and is not fiction, and is the highest number built since 2008. There are more than 16,000 first-time buyers, which is also a fact and is not fiction, and it is also th…

-----and they will do so again.

Solidarity-People Before Profit has voted against every major piece of constructive housing legislation brought forward by the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, and has produced no serious alternatives. Its Members voted against the first ever Affordable Housing Bill, the Land Development Agency Bill, which aimed to build social and affordable houses on State land, and important planning legislation. They opposed the help-to-buy scheme, the first home scheme and the vacancy grant scheme. The list is endless. That party sho…

I thank Deputies across the House for their contributions to the debate. I wish to acknowledge the points raised regarding the challenges that our emergency departments are currently experiencing due to increased service demands. I also wish to acknowledge the invaluable work carried out by our health and social care workers in providing health services to patients. As we are here talking about challenges and the current issues affecting health services, I am conscious that all over the country tonight in our acute…

I thank Deputy Ward for his question. The Deputy will be aware that the Mental Health Commission is an independent statutory body established under the Mental Health Act 2001. The commission’s principal functions are to promote, encourage and foster the establishment and maintenance of high standards and good practices in the delivery of mental health services and to take all reasonable steps to protect the interests of persons detained in approved centres under the Act. As the Mental Health Commission is an indepe…

To be fair, when the initial report from Dr. Seán Maskey was presented to me I acted quickly and promptly. I initiated an independent audit by the HSE of three particular areas, namely, prescribing, standard operation procedures and the interaction of parents and families with CAMHS. The Mental Health Commission also agreed to conduct a full review of all nine CHOs. The standard operating procedure is that the Mental Health Commission must, in the first instance, raise any issues with the HSE, which is providing th…

The HSE acts when it is contacted by the Mental Health Commission. Any safeguarding issues or concerns raised are dealt with promptly and appropriately by the HSE and the relevant CAMHS teams. At the same time, we must remember that thousands of children are receiving the support of CAMHS multidisciplinary teams on a daily basis. They receive good supports. I must try to build confidence in the service. On the Maskey report, the Deputy is right. Unfortunately, the post in Kerry south has been funded since 2014 but …

In 2023, the overall budget for home support will exceed €700 million. Over the last three budgets, I have secured more than €200 million in additional funding for home care support, a 42% increase since 2020. I thank the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, for his support, and that of the whole Government and Cabinet, in ensuring this particular funding has been provided. I am in the unique position that I have the full provision of funding I need to deliver home care to 56,500 people every day. The prob…

We have been working very hard on the statutory home care scheme over recent years. We lost time during Covid. I would be the first to admit that. The Deputy is right that we need the same standards in respect of home care the length and breadth of the country. The interRAI, which is the single assessment tool, is what will provide that. I secured funding in my very first budget to hire 128 assessors, and they are being recruited at the moment. We have four pilot sites operational. The pilot sites started early las…

There are a great many home care workers the length and breadth of the country. To be fair, 56,500 people will receive home care today. Many will receive more than one visit during the day. However, we are seeing many more complex cases as a result of Covid and more referrals from GPs and public health nurses for people to avail of this service. The Deputy is right that if there are blockages in the community system, there will be blockages in the acute system. Two of the main recommendations were that when people …

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. I was not aware of it. I know that in my area, for example, there is huge provision of community and step-down beds and transitional beds for up to 11 weeks for people who it is deemed no longer need to be in an acute hospital and whose consultant has said they need only community or step-down care. As the Deputy will know, we are abolishing all inpatient charges in hospital settings next year. If she wishes to forward me any of the details of those cases, I will certainl…

I thank the Deputy for her question. The Government is conscious of the financial challenges faced by the nursing home sector and has acted accordingly. The cost of residential care to the State was €1.4 billion last year. We received approximately €350 million back from people who avail of the fair deal support mechanism. As of today, there are 22,613 people living in nursing homes receiving support under fair deal. The full cost is €9.45 billion. Private nursing homes received nearly 70% of this funding under the…

The Department of Health acknowledges that there are variations in the cost of care across public community hospitals as against private nursing homes. I visited Sacred Heart Hospital, Carlow with the Deputy.

It is a fantastic facility. Does the Deputy remember, on the day we were there, the amount of work being done with the integrated care programme for older persons, ICPOP, team, in relation to supporting people to age well at home, nutrition and dietary requirements and the risk of frailty and falls? The HSE will always step in where a resident's needs are sufficiently complex that they cannot be cared for elsewhere in the community. The HSE needs to be staffed to deliver that kind of complex care. The average price…

I thank the Deputy for the way in which she addressed this. I am in discussions with Department officials to examine ways in which funding can continue to be used to support, where necessary and appropriate, those nursing homes not scheduled to renegotiate their deeds of agreement this year. We are also looking at an expected extension of the temporary inflation payment scheme. The Department's records show that 18 nursing homes have closed this year with a reduction of 514 registered beds. This includes two nursin…

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue and I welcome the opportunity to discuss day care centres because they are such an important provision for older people. There are three key points in supporting older people to live well in their own homes: home care, day care centres and meals on wheels. When the three are working in collaboration with each other, it makes an important difference to an older person's life. As the Deputy will be aware, the HSE has operational responsibility for planning, managing and deliv…

The Deputy is quite right in what she said. We all know the benefits of day care centres. It is one of my priorities to get them open as safely and as securely as possible. One of the areas where we have seen challenges is in day care centres that were adjacent to or part of amenity nursing units, which were our old-style community hospitals. Any place in which there was a day care centre, there were challenges. We still have approximately 70 nursing homes throughout the country with Covid-19. The difficulties were…