Nearly 900 on Cork waiting list for HSE’s Home Support Service
CorkmanHealth care assistants need to be given better pay and conditions if there is to be any prospect of clearing the nearly 900-person waiting list for the HSE’s Home Support Service in Cork, councillors have said.
At this week’s meeting of Cork County Council, Cllr John Michael Foley put forward a motion calling on the council to write to the health minister and the HSE to highlight the number of people waiting for home help and to ask for a strategic plan to deal with the issue.
Cllr Foley told the meeting that at the end of October 2025, 890 people in Cork city and county were on a waiting list for the service. Of these, 543 were new clients while 347 were existing clients waiting for additional hours. At the same time recruitment and retention are major challenges, with 161 health care assistants retiring or resigning in the region in 2024 while just 105 were hired.
The West Cork councillor said the gaps in service delivery “are not due to a lack of funding for home support hours, but rather a lack of available carers to deliver those hours. In other words, the hours exist on paper, but the workforce does not exist in sufficient numbers to deliver them on the ground.”
Cllr Foley said that Home Support is one of the most effective ways of keeping people out of already under-pressure nursing homes. “When Home Support is delayed or reduced, people do not simply cope without it; their health deteriorates, family carers become overwhelmed, and admission to long-term residential care becomes unavoidable.”
“This is not theoretical. My own mother is paraplegic and continues to live at home because of the care provided by my father and by care assistants who attend to her. Without that Home Support, she would be in a nursing home, adding to a system that is already stretched to breaking point,” he said.
Cllr Gobnait Moynihan supported the motion, saying “the issue with the shortage of home helps is quite simple, really – the pay is shocking. And they need to be treated with the respect that they deserve, which is decent pay. They're expected to come into the house and help in 30 minutes for a job that will take definitely more than the 30 minutes.”
“And then they walk out that door with that burden on their shoulders, knowing that they're walking away, that possibly nobody else will come back to that house until they're back in tomorrow. Why would you take on that burden and that stress? So it's quite simple. If you want more home help, pay them,” she said.
Cllr Joe Carroll said: “The main point to be made here is that if home help stopped in the morning we'd have a major crisis in the country. The hospitals couldn't take these people, the nursing homes couldn’t take them. Home helps have to be recognised and they have to be treated a lot better than what they are.”
The HSE Home Support Service provides free, non-means-tested assistance for people aged 65 and over to help them live independently at home or return home after a hospital stay. The services provided include assistance with daily tasks, such as personal care, meal preparation and light housework.
In line with Cllr Foley’s motion, Cork County Council will now write to the health minister and the HSE about the service. “There are fantastic people doing the work of home helps across the county and across the country, and it truly is a vocation. But the echoing words here today are that the pay isn't adequate and it needs to be increased without a doubt,” he said.