Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has said he is looking for more money for the Fair Deal nursing home scheme.
He said overcrowding in hospital emergency departments is not as bad as it was in January but was still substantially worse than at the same period last year.
Health service managers have linked tackling the the number of patients on trolleys to dealing with delays in the operation of the Fair Deal scheme, which means that patients in hospitals who have completed the treatment cannot be moved to nursing homes.
“We are going to seek more resources for Fair Deal to try to get the waiting time down, to get more in hospitals out to nursing homes where they can be looked after and hopefully in the process reduce the number of people waiting on trolleys and on wards,” Mr Varadkar said.
Speaking at Siptu’s health care assistants’ conference in Dublin on Thursday, the Minister also indicated he supported the call for health care assistants to be regulated by a regulatory body.
Mr Varadkar said that he was very aware healthcare assistants wanted to see the introduction of a professional registration system under Coru, the regulator for health and social care professionals, along the lines of that in place for other professions such as dieticians and therapists in the health service.
“To me it seems something that makes sense and surely must be in the long terms interest of healthcare assistants and patients that professional registration should become the norm, ” Mr Varadkar said.
However the Minister said it would take time to work it out.
He said there were supposed to be 12 professions registered with Coru but “we have only got around to making it happen with six of them”.
Siptu health division organiser Paul Bell said in order for the healthcare assistants to be in a position to respond to the future demands, it would be necessary to first professionalise these front line health workers.
“ These workers are the only group to provide ‘hands on’ patient care who not to be registered by a regulatory body,” he said.
"It will also be necessary for Government to commit to on-going training and education of health care assistants and those who wish to seek careers in this area of health provision. These considerations are already subject to two separate European studies, including on by the European Commission. "
