Projections of regional demand and bed capacity requirements for older people’s care in Ireland, 2022–2040: Based on the Hippocrates model

This report is part of a new series of reports that uses the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) Hippocrates model to provide up-to-date projections for three service areas (public acute hospitals, general practice and older peoples’ services) at both national and regional level. Focusing on older people’s services, this report extends the national-level demand and bed capacity analysis published in Walsh and Kakoulidou (2025), by estimating regional activity profiles for 2022 for the six HSE Health Regions, and providing medium-term regional projections of demand and bed capacity requirements to 2040 for long-term residential care (LTRC) and home support for each HSE Health Region. 

Building on the existing modelling framework, the specific objectives of this report are to: 

• provide regional profiles for LTRC bed capacity and home support hours among older people (aged 65 years and over) for each HSE Health Region; and 

• project LTRC bed capacity and home support hour requirements to 2040 for each HSE Health Region. 

Hippocrates model projections are influenced by the model of service delivery, data availability and quality, and the policy environment in the base year. Fluctuations in activity rates for older people’s services occurred in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic period. While available national-level data on older people’s services are limited, as discussed in Walsh and Kakoulidou (2025), available data at the HSE Health Region level are even more limited. Consequently, the findings in this report should be interpreted with caution. It is anticipated that as the HSE Health Regions become more embedded into the health system over time, better data will be available, allowing more refined analyses to be undertaken.