As the Minister of State is well aware, there are an awful lot of problems regarding the provision of home packages. One of the big issues that strikes me is the privatisation of it. At the moment, about 60% of the home care packages are provided by private companies. It used to be the opposite way around. It was 60% to 40%. A total of 60% or 70% of packages in years gone by were provided by the State through the HSE. That is still the way it should be done if possible. While this Bill is about regulation, one of the issues is that if a person signs up to be a home care provider at the moment in this country, he or she will be paid about €16 per hour. The minimum wage is €14.15. It is not even €2 above the minimum wage for somebody to go out there and care for an elderly person or a person with disabilities. That is something that needs to be looked at. Yet, when the State provides that and 60% of it is provided by the private companies, it is paying nearly double that per hour because it has to pay for the administration fees and the profit margins that the companies have to make. That is their business. Fair play to them. That is fine. The State should be ensuring that they pay adequately. I talk to all of the people on the ground, and they keep telling me that they cannot get carers and people to do it. It is because they are not paying them enough. We need to be pay over €20 an hour to attract people to go in to do that kind of work. That is the reality. If the State does not step up to the mark in respect of that, it will simply not be able to provide that service. The other issue we have to recognise relates to what they are doing when they go out to provide the care. It has now moved from being just care services only. If an elderly person needs to have a shower or whatever, they can get that done. However, if they need a few dishes picked up off the table and put them in the sink and run the brush around the floor for two minutes, the carer is not allowed to do it. The carer cannot do that. If there is something spilt on the floor, which could be a slip hazard, the carer is not allowed to mop it up. They are not allowed to that because it is not a care service. That is one of the key things that changed in the past number of years, which an awful lot of elderly people that I talk to tell me is a huge problem. There needs to be a way in which they can provide service that they need as well as the care services out there.

Sentiment score: 0.11