Expanded, but not regulated: ambiguity in home-care policy in Ireland

Abstract

This article argues that home-care policy in Ireland was ambiguous throughout the first decade of the 21st century: policy-makers expanded home care, but failed to develop policies to govern this expanded provision. As a result, home care became more widely available in the absence of a framework to govern access to services and to regulate care providers. We analysed official policy documents, statistics and policy critiques published between 2000 and 2010 in order to understand this incongruity between the expansion of home-care services and the failure to develop policies to govern access to and quality of services. The key factors that motivated home-care expansion in the Irish case were: (1) problems in the acute hospital sector and the perception of home care as a partial solution to these (political blame avoidance) and (2) significant GDP growth (until 2007) that provided politicians with the means to fund expansion in home-care services (political credit claiming). The key factors that inhibited the development of a policy framework to govern home-care services were: (1) weak governance structures in health services and decision-making at national level based on short-term political gain; (2) Ireland's adherence to the liberal welfare state model and concern about uncontrollable care costs in the face of population ageing; (3) until 2010, paucity of attention to home-care issues in the Irish media and (4) weak provider interest representation. The recent budgetary cutbacks in Ireland bring into sharp relief the political expediency of an unregulated domiciliary care sector and absence of entitlements to home care. We conclude that the forces that drive expanded provision are different from drivers of policy to govern home care and that weakness of governance structures and political advantages of the absence of regulation are the main reasons for the lack of standards and entitlement rules.