More than 6,000 older people are waiting for a carer

George Finglas, 86, with his home carer Jamie Egan. Picture: Naoise Culhane

The national shortage of carers is the most urgent problem in homecare today, Minister of State for Older People Mary Butler said.

A conference on homecare also heard it was time to stop clapping for carers and show practical support instead.

More than 6,000 older people are waiting for a carer, perhaps in hospital unable to go home or moved to a nursing home as they cannot stay at home without support.

Ms Butler said the current demand for home support hours was unprecedented.

“No issue is more urgent than the nationwide shortage of care workers,” she told the Home and Community Care Ireland annual conference on Thursday.

She added: “From January to July of this year, the State has provided 12.4m hours of home support, an increase of 8% compared to last year.” 

She said the pandemic showed the value of compassionate care at home.

“We need to do more than just fill vacancies for carers,” she said. “In the context of our ageing population, many of whom have complex care needs, we must recognise that carers often need support of multi-disciplinary teams.” 

George Finglas, 86, described how carers have helped since his wife died last year.

“They’re terrific, these girls are angels,” he said. “There is nothing I need that I don’t get from them healthwise, chats-wise, which is very important. They’ve drawn out my visitations from half an hour in the morning to half an hour in the evening as well, that’s great.”

At the same conference, Fine Gael MEP Frances Fitzgerald called for a change in attitudes to carers across Europe.

“During Covid-19 restrictions, we all remember clapping for the caregivers every night,” she said.

“It is long past time that society showed its gratitude in a more concrete way, in terms of employment support, investment, workforce planning and infrastructure.” 

She said a European Care Strategy would open the door to improvements in this sector.

Pay gap

Meanwhile, trade union Siptu has raised concerns about plans to address a pay gap between HSE and private or voluntary carers.

This follows a Government working group report which recommended increasing wages to €12.90 an hour.

“In the private sector there are appalling conditions, they would say to us very clearly they are over-worked and under-paid,” sector organiser Pat Flannery said.

“The report is talking about the national living wage. That is €12.90 and that falls short of what the starting point is for healthcare assistants employed in the public sector.” 

HSE carers start at €14.65 and are paid travel costs. 

“We have to try and bridge the gap,” he said. “Otherwise it is just a revolving door situation where one group is taking staff from another group.” 

This can be seen during HSE recruitment competitions for healthcare assistant and home support roles.

“The HSE runs the competition, people who apply for those jobs then are people working in the private services,” he said.

“Then the private services say we haven’t enough staff to cover this number of clients, and they hand them back to the HSE. It’s a vicious circle really.”