People living with dementia to benefit from €30m funding.

I am delighted by the announcement today by the Minister for Primary and Social Care, Kathleen Lynch TD, that The Atlantic Philanthropies will make grants of €14.7m available to improve the care and wellbeing of people living with dementia in Ireland. This sum will be matched by the Department of Health and the HSE.

Ireland has benefited over the years from funding for various projects from Atlantic Philanthropies, who have been extremely generous in their investments  but this latest announcement is one of the most important. This  collaboration with Atlantic will ensure that we can make huge strides in implementing the National Dementia Strategy.
For those people living with dementia, as well as their families, this funding will go a long way towards improving their day to day situation. It will also enable us to carry out much needed research in the area of dementia.

Substantive agreement has been reached with The Atlantic Philanthropies on a number of collaborations which will include:

• A collaboration to implement elements of the draft National Dementia Strategy

• A programme of research relevant to dementia, in conjunction with the Health Research Board. This will include applied research to address specific policy concerns and will also be open to other research proposals which may emerge.

The Department of Health is providing some €1 million in matching funding to support the research element of the collaboration and the HSE is providing matching funding of some €15 million for the three priority areas of intensive home care supports, GP education and training, and dementia awareness.