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- 1,450 organisations to receive one-off payment
- Minimum payment of €1,000
- HSE to make payments in coming weeks
The Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly; Minister of State with responsibility for Disability, Anne Rabbitte; Minister of State for Mental Health and Older People, Mary Butler, and Minister of State with responsibility for Public Health, Wellbeing and the National Drugs Strategy, Hildegarde Naughton are today (Monday 20 February) announcing the allocation of €81m from the Government’s ‘Inflation Fund’.
Community-based and voluntary health and social care providers are being allocated the funding on a once-off basis as part of Government measures to ease cost-of-living pressures.
At Budget 2023, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform announced funding to assist various sectors with costs related to energy inflation, including €100 million targeted at “a range of Health funded bodies including nursing homes, hospices and Section 39 organisations”.
€10 million of this funding was already allocated to fund the Temporary Inflation Payment Scheme for private and voluntary nursing homes. Under this scheme, nursing homes can claim up to €5,250 per month to cover up to 75% of their energy costs from July to December 2022.
Last year presented challenges to our economy and society as a whole. In the wake of COVID-19, and as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the country has experienced a dramatic increase in the prices of goods and services, particularly but not limited to energy costs.
Minister Donnelly said:
Voluntary organisations play absolutely vital roles in providing frontline services to the most vulnerable in our society: people with disabilities, older people, those suffering from addiction, mental health problems and life-limiting illnesses. Many of these service providers have faced serious pressures in light of high inflation in 2022. I hope that this additional once-off funding will go some way towards recognising those costs.
The Department of Health has worked with the HSE to finalise a scope and basis for distributing this funding amongst relevant provider organisations. This is now agreed, and payments will shortly commence.
There are over 1,450 organisations that will receive payments, ranging from local community groups to major national service providers.
Around €62 million will go to disability service providers, €6.8 million to older persons services, €3.9 million into social inclusion (including drugs and homeless services), €3.3 million into palliative care, €0.4 million to health and wellbeing and €0.6 million to other organisations operating in the primary care space, including many disease-specific NGOs.
This is a once-off payment in recognition of inflationary cost increases incurred over the course of 2022, and the impact of these on the cost of delivering the services under each organisation’s relevant agreement with the Department of Health.
More detail on how the fund works is set out in the accompanying document.
All eligible organisations will shortly receive a letter from the HSE confirming the amount that they will receive and the terms of the fund.
Appendix – How does the fund work?
Who is eligible to receive the funding?
In order to be eligible for the funding, organisations must meet a set of criteria. Specifically, they must be voluntary, not-for-profit organisations funded under Section 38 and Section 39 of the Health Act, or directly by the Department of Health, except where otherwise excluded from scope (see below). This includes:
o Residential and day care providers for people with disabilities and older people
o Homecare providers for people with disabilities and a small number of voluntary homecare providers for older people
o Hospices and palliative care providers
o Disease and condition-specific NGOs
o Addiction and Social Inclusion services receiving health-specific funding such as Depaul Ireland, Simon Community, including where funded by the Department of Health
o Mental health hospitals and service providers
o Organisations delivering Health & Wellbeing services around the country (including where delivered through Local Authorities under Sláintecare)
Boarding out providers funded through the Boarding Out regulations under the Health (Nursing Homes) Act 1990 will also receive payments.
For further clarification, there are some Section 38/39 provider types that have been excluded for the scope of this fund. These organisations are:
1. Acute hospitals funded under section 38
2. Dental hospitals funded under section 38
3. Out-of-hours GP services
4. Direct funding to Local Authorities and other government agencies
5. Universities
6. Non-hospice nursing homes that have agreements with the NTPF under Section 40 of the Nursing Home Support Scheme Act
The fund will also not apply to:
1. For-profit providers funded outside of Section 38 and 39.
2. GPs, Dentists, physiotherapists, opticians and other professionals who provide services for a fee.
3. Services directly provided by the HSE.
A full list of all organisations within scope of the fund has been set out in the appendix to this note, along with the amounts each organisation is expected to receive.
What amount will each organisation receive?
Noting the large number of organisations within scope and the divergences in operating conditions between these organisations, it was decided to apply a basic rate to the overall annual allocation of each organisation at 3.5% in order to determine an appropriate amount to recognise once-off cost increases in 2022. The payments will have a minimal value of €1000, meaning that all organisations meeting the scope will receive at least this amount in recognition of their increased costs.
How does the fund relate to other government schemes in respect of 2022 cost inflation?
It has been agreed with the Department of Rural and Community Development (DRCD) that organisations funded by the Department of Health (including those funded by the HSE under section 39 of the Health Act), which fully meet the criteria of the Community and Voluntary Energy Support Scheme (CVESS), may now apply under the CVESS, up to the level that is approved for eligible organisations, net of the contribution from the HSE or Department of Health.
Eligibility under the CVESS scheme is a matter for Pobal and DRCD and is therefore unrelated to eligibility for this Department of Health fund. Further details on the CVESS are available on the Pobal website: www.pobal.ie. With the exception of the CVESS, as set out above, organisations in receipt of this funding should not seek funding from any government schemes reimbursing inflationary cost increases for 2022.