Home care crisis: Carers paid €11 per hour while companies make huge profits

Low wages, long hours, and insecure working conditions are pushing the largely female workforce out of the caring industry — which has a direct impact on the people who rely on carers

HSE Cork/Kerry has been recruiting since January and said by March it had 100 people at pre-employment stage with a 'respectable number of applications'.

The crisis in healthcare is too often only discussed in terms of hospitals, but for almost 5,000 mainly elderly people the crisis is in their homes.

A severe shortage of carers is leaving these people without anyone to deliver their funded homecare packages, leaving many of them in bed all day.