‘Infrastructure crisis’ is blamed for severe lack of home-care staff
The housing crisis, a lack of public t r ansport and a delayed HSE pay deal have been blamed for the crisis.
Mary Butler, Minister for State with responsibility for older people, told the Irish Daily Mail that in 2023 only 440 foreign workers arrived on work permits that were allocated to tackle the staffing problem in home help.
At the end of 2022, Ms Butler secured 1,000 work permits for people from outside of the EU to come and work as home carers in Ireland but less than half have been taken up.
Of the 440 people given work permits last year, 170 are from Brazil, 67 from the Philippines, 53 from India and 34 from Nigeria.
Ms Butler said they are pursui ng r ecruitment strategies outside the EU to attract more workers, with 2,900 people waiting for home care in Ireland.
She said the shortage of carers, and not a lack of funding, is to blame for the waiting list.
She told the Mail: ‘I am funded to the end of this year to deliver every single hour of home care I can. Where I am challenged is I don’t have the carers.’
She said there are also another 3,000 people getting Monday-toFriday home help but not at the weekend and they are waiting for a carer for those hours.
Ms Butler said when she took on the job three years ago, they were delivering 19 million hours of care, and in 2023 they were on course to deliver 22 million.
Not enough home carers: Junior Minister Mary Butler
Joseph Musgrave, head of Home and Community Care Ireland (HCCI), said it was not surprising to hear that less than half of the home care work permits on offer had been taken up.
He said Ireland has an ‘infrastructure crisis’ in housing and public transport which makes it difficult for home carers to live and get from patient to patient.
‘I think our public infrastructure, like our public transport, is a bit of a disgrace,’ he said.
Mr Musgrave said he has recently heard from members who are investing in housing stock to accommodate workers recruited f rom abroad, and members have reported buying cars for carers to get around.
The HCCI chief said the sector is still recovering from an ‘exodus’ of workers after the 2021 Government offer of permits to combat a staffing crisis in nursing homes and hospitals, which drew workers from home care. The sector’s new pay deal was supposed to have been signed by January last year but was only completed in August.
Mr Musgrave said that while the current pay deal runs for another six months, the Government should hammer out the new details as soon as possible to attract people from abroad.
‘I think if you want to provide surety to the sector, the Government should – well in advance of that – sit down with the sector and say, ‘we’re open to indexation, or if they will pay for mileage,’ Mr Musgrave said.
Under the agreement, carers are paid for the time they spend travelling between patients.
Ms Butler said: ‘The private companies are being paid a call rate of €31 an hour to do home
‘I think this is totally bonkers’
care. As part of the tender agreement, they have to pay at a minimum €13.10 an hour, which was the living wage at that time.’
Mr Musgrave said the August deal has helped with the retention of staff, but work is still needed on the pay deal, to index the living wage and pay for mileage instead of travel time.
‘What we have right now is a dumb home care system. You have a spectrum of work and we pay one rate for it. I think this is totally bonkers.’
Mr Musgrave s ai d t hat introducing a system that pays for the of level of social care, with upskilling and higher wages paid to those who progress, would ‘transform the way we do social care’.