The Minister of State with Responsibility for Older People has said there are still too many people seeking access to Home Support Services, and so his department cannot keep up with demand.
The Health Service Executive scheme allows people to be discharged from hospital and cared for in their own homes, but now has a waiting list of more than 6,300 people.
The HSE says there are now 6,310 people waiting for Home Support and that budget pressures "may impact on their ability to provide new hours into the system."
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Jim Daly said there were fewer people waiting for home help than last year, but they still cannot keep up with demand.
"There is fewer people waiting for home help today than there was this day last year. There still is too many people, obviously with 6,000 people looking for packages, but we cannot simply keep up with the demand, so if we've increased the budget by 50%, and we still cannot go anywhere near the demand that is there for home help."
The minister said the scheme was absolutely not closed, and it had been given an increase in budget over the years.
On the HSE saying budget constraints "may impact on its ability to provide new hours", the minister said that meant the scheme had a finite budget, and so they cannot guarantee everyone who wants home help can get home help.
While Mr Daly said he couldn't comment on individual cases featured on this morning's programme, he said there were cases where people would have to wait hours, days, or in some cases weeks.
He said many complications arise when it comes to getting somebody home such as the availability of resources.
Mr Daly said that budget overruns in the health sector were not impacting on the funding that was available to him for the scheme.
