Registered, authorised, approved: the three lists an agency can be on

"Are we on the right list?" is a question I've been asked in three different kitchens this summer, and each time the honest answer was that I'd have to look. Home care in Ireland has never had one list. It has had a local relationship with the HSE that sends you hours, a national scheme that approves you at a rate, and, since July, a law that will make a third list the only one that matters legally. They grew up separately, they're run by different people, and until now nobody outside the HSE has needed to hold all three in their head at once.

Now an owner does, because each list asks for a different kind of proof, and the third one asks for all of it. This is the map of the three, in plain English, with a way to check where your agency stands before the end of a coffee.

1 · The three lists, side by side

List one · the local arrangement

List two · the Home Support Authorisation Scheme

List three · HIQA's register of home support providers

Read down the last row and the shape is clear. The first is a relationship, the second is a contract, the third is a licence. Getting HSE hours, being on the Scheme and being registered with HIQA are three different things, and being on one tells you nothing about the other two.

2 · List one: hours on a needs basis, from the office that knows you

Start with how a home-support hour actually reaches an agency, because most of the confusion lives here. Someone is referred: a hospital discharge, a GP, a daughter who can't manage any more. The HSE assesses them and the local Home Support Office authorises a package, so many hours a week, of what. Then the office looks for a provider. Where the HSE's own staff can't cover it, it goes to an agency the office already deals with.

That is list one. It isn't a document you sign so much as a standing relationship: your office knows your patch, your carers and your phone number, and hours come to you as needs arise. Plenty of agencies have got their HSE work this way for years, under a contract from before the current scheme or a local agreement that was never called anything in particular.

What it asks for is whatever your office asks for. In practice that's a monthly account of hours per client, an invoice the HSE's accounts system will accept (it has to quote a valid purchase-order number, and it must not carry a client's personal details), and straight answers when they ring. Some offices have their own form. If yours does, keep a copy where the coordinator can find it, because it's the closest thing you have to a specification.

3 · List two: an approved provider at a fixed rate

The Home Support Authorisation Scheme is how the HSE has approved and paid home-support providers since 2023. It replaced the tender that came before it, and the word "authorisation" is the point: it isn't a competition. A provider that meets the requirements is approved to work in its area; there's no bidding and no losing out to a cheaper rival. The Scheme was reopened in 2025 so that providers not already on it could apply.

Being on it means three things. The rate is fixed and not for negotiation, and the Department of Health has said it was set to cover the National Living Wage for carers and paid travel time between clients, two of the reforms the sector had asked for. Mileage isn't in it: in July 2026, Home and Community Care Ireland told the Government that fuel costs go unfunded on the Scheme, and that 77% of its members had carers leaving or cutting hours over them. And you're paid for hours delivered, after the fact, against a purchase order, with a per-client breakdown going separately to the local office.

What it asks you to prove follows from that. Delivered hours per client per month, at the right rate band. That the carer was paid the Living Wage and paid for travel time. That the service specification is met, and the Scheme's specifications are written in line with HIQA's national standards for safer, better healthcare, so the vetting, training and record-keeping questions are the same ones an inspector will ask. Verification is mostly your own declaration, counter-signed by the HSE and spot-checked, rather than anything electronic. The Scheme doesn't tell you what system to use, only what to show.

(This is the record Careloom's Timesheets and Invoicing screens were built to produce: the hours, and the travel time between visits, are written down as the day happens, and at month end the funder's invoice and the per-client breakdown are an export rather than a Friday's retyping.)

One thing being on the Scheme does not do is make you ready for HIQA. The Scheme checks that you're a fit provider to be paid. The register will check how you care for people. The proof overlaps a great deal, which is the good news, but a clean Scheme file is not an inspection pass.

4 · List three: the register that decides whether you can operate at all

The Health (Amendment) (Home Support Providers) Act 2026 was signed on 20 July 2026. It amends the same Health Act 2007 that nursing homes have answered to since 2009, and once the Minister commences it, every home support provider must apply to HIQA's Chief Inspector of Social Services for registration. From then on, carrying on as a home support provider without being registered is an offence. I've written up the whole Act plainly; this is the part that matters for the list.

It follows the sector, not the money. HSE hours, Scheme hours, private clients, a mix: all in scope. The exemptions are narrow. Providing home support to fewer than four people. An individual doing it without commercial gain. Professionals already regulated under their own law. And HSE-funded personal assistance, which was kept out pending a separate review. If you're an agency with carers on a rota, none of those is you.

The shape of registration, as far as it has been published: existing providers get a transition, notifying the Chief Inspector within three months of the registration provisions starting and then applying within two years. The Oireachtas Library's Bill Digest, published before the Act passed, described a registration lasting three years, an annual fee to be set by regulation, a register kept online and free to inspect, and penalties on conviction of a fine, imprisonment or both. What isn't known yet is the fee, the date, or the final wording of the regulations and standards. Nobody can tell you your deadline today, and I'd be wary of anyone who does.

What it asks for is the part nobody underestimates once they've seen it: evidence against the regulations and the national standards. Care plans, visit records, medication records, staff files, the rota, policies and proof people read them, incidents and complaints, and how records are kept. The eight records, dated, in a place a stranger could find them. Registration is a relationship, too: the Chief Inspector can attach conditions, refuse, or cancel, and can serve a compliance notice you're obliged to act on.

5 · Why the difference matters this year

Three reasons, in the order they'll arrive.

So "which list are we on?" isn't an admin question. It's the question that tells you which of the next two years' jobs is already done, and which is still ahead of you.

6 · Which list are you on? A ten-minute check, and what to do about it

The check

This month

Find out which list you're on and write it down somewhere the coordinator can see it, with the name of your contact at the Home Support Office beside it. If you're on list one alone, ask that contact two questions: what they need from you each month, and when the Scheme next takes applications.

This quarter

If you're not on the Scheme and you want HSE work in the long run, get the application together while it's a quiet job rather than a rushed one: the documents any HSE arrangement asks for (insurance, tax clearance, your policies), the vetting and training register, and a way of showing hours and travel time per carer. Those are the same documents list three will want, so nothing here is wasted.

This year

Treat list three as certain and its date as unknown. Keep the eight records as a habit rather than a project, and when the commencement order is signed you'll be notifying the Chief Inspector with a file that already exists, alongside the roughly two hundred other providers in the Department of Health's 2024 count, reaching for theirs. The map has the whole road, if you'd like to see where this sits on it.

7 · Honest questions, honest answers

8 · Where Careloom fits, briefly

Careloom is the rota, care plans, medication records, timesheets, incidents and inspection evidence for an independent agency, in one place, built in Donegal around the three lists above. The readiness view shows the eight records against the draft standards and where each one stands today, and the funder-facing exports (the invoice without a client's name on it, and the per-client breakdown beside it) come out of the same timesheets that record the carer's travel time. If you'd like to see it on a month that looks like yours, book a twenty-minute walkthrough and I'll take you through it myself.

But whatever you end up using, start with the phone call: which list are we on, and what does the office need from us each month? It costs nothing, and it's the question everything else this year hangs on.