by Matthew Austin July-26-2024 in Commercial & Business
The demand for in home care and home support services in Ireland has seen a significant increase in recent years, largely due to an aging population and the desire on the part of many elderly people to remain in their own homes for as long as possible. As noted by a senior Civil Servant in a recent appearance before the Oireachtas Health Committee, the Oireachtas has allocated approximately €730 million in 2024 to deliver 22 million hours of standard home support to older people, with a further 3.5 million hours to be delivered to people with a disability. The HSE is a significant stakeholder in this sector in contracting with private providers for the provision of in home support services. However, to date, there is no independent regulation of the sector, in contrast to the nursing home sector where Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) is charged with the oversight and inspection of nursing home care.
The Department of Health has recently published a draft General Scheme of the Health (Amendment) (Licensing of Professional Home Support Providers) Bill 2024, aimed at improving the safety, quality and transparency of home support services. The Bill seeks to expand HIQA’s current role to include the regulation of homecare service.
To meet these improved standards, the Bill provides that a licensing system, as well as a system of oversight, will be established to confer specific authority on HIQA’s Chief Inspector of Social Services to grant, amend or revoke a licence for home care providers. HIQA will be charged with the development of national standards for all home support providers and will have the entitlement to carry out inspections to ensure standards are being met. This kind of regulatory system will be familiar to those with knowledge of how HIQA operates in the context of nursing home regulation.
The Bill also includes transitional provisions for existing home support providers in the interests of smoothing the path from a largely unregulated existence. To date, providers have mostly been regulated only by the constraints imposed by their contractual arrangements with the HSE, under what is commonly referred to as a section 38 contract (by reference to section 38 of the Health Act, 2004).
The draft legislation is in its infancy, but it is clear from a recent Oireachtas Health Committee hearing on the subject that significant work has been undertaken to prepare for the introduction of the regime sketched out by the draft legislation, and that there is significant momentum toward bringing the legislation into effect.
For further information or advice on how this draft legislation will impact your organisation, please contact Matthew Austin, Partner, in our Commercial & Business team.
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About the Author
Matthew Austin
Matthew is a partner in the Commercial & Business team and has considerable expertise in a range of practice areas, having acted for Irish and International clients in domestic and multi-jurisdictional issues. Matthew has advised in civil and administrative law disputes and in regulatory and advisory matters including insolvency/restructuring, IP, defamation and media law, competition and consumer protection and data protection.