Sinn Féin spokesperson on Health, David Cullinane TD, has expressed frustration and disappointment at the Minister for Health’s “limited and underwhelming” Homecare Bill, the Health (Amendment) (Licensing of Professional Home Support Providers) Bill 2024.

Teachta Cullinane made the remarks following pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill at the Joint Committee on Health this morning.

The Waterford TD said the Bill relates entirely to the regulation of providers of homecare services, and does not address access to services or affordability, which falls far short of the promises of Sláintecare and the expectations set in the Programme for Government.

Teachta Cullinane said:

“The Programme for Government promised a Statutory Home Care Scheme as part of the Government’s commitments to fair and affordable healthcare.

“This promise was made alongside GP cards, removing inpatient charges, and reducing medicine costs.

“It was accepted by all parties, in the Sláintecare Report, that a statutory entitlement to homecare and community care, equivalent to the Fair Deal scheme for nursing home care, is needed.

“Yet, seven years later, all the Government can produce is a limited and underwhelming licensing scheme.

“This Bill has become entirely about regulating a market of providers, instead of providing a statutory right of access.

“The expectation was an improved version of the Nursing Home Support Scheme which delivered equitable access to home care.

“This is widely recognised as essential to reducing pressure on hospitals.

“The Sláintecare report also recognises that, in the absence of an entitlement to homecare services, many people pay out of pocket for private homecare services, and that this should be addressed by ‘ending the over-reliance on market mechanisms to deliver new health care services by the expansion of public nursing homes and homecare’.

“This Bill, in fact, does the opposite by designing the home care regulatory system around the private market, further embedding privatisation, instead of resetting the balance within a genuinely public health system which is universal in access and free at the point of access.

“This is highly frustrating and disappointing.

“This Government have failed to deliver meaningful homecare reform, to reduce hospital waiting lists, to expand medical card eligibility, or deliver an entitlement-based system of care.

“Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have turned their backs on the core community and homecare reforms which underpin Sláintecare – if they ever believed in them in the first place.”