Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I may not have made myself clear. The system in Scotland is designed to ensure the constant availability of beds. We have a problem with delayed discharges. Part of the problem is finding a bed in a nursing home. If the vast majority of nursing home beds are provided by the private sector and the State leases a chunk of it, the system is operated by the State. Therefore, there can be throughput and it makes for efficiency in hospitals as well as in nursing homes because nursing homes know a wing or unit has been leased.

The Scottish health Minister was a proponent of the system. It is not intended to create a kind of "Upstairs, Downstairs" nursing home but rather to give the hospitals and health system the certainty of knowing that beds are available. When a patient is ready for discharge to a nursing home bed, it is available and he or she is not waiting three, four, five or six days or wrestling with fair deal forms or anything else. A person can be discharged in a timely fashion.

It is an aid to the hospital as much as anything else because they know they can put hands on beds, as it were. I would like to see that system investigated. If international best practice suggests it works, we should not busy ourselves trying to reinvent the wheel. If something works in another jurisdiction, we should be take the research and run with it if it is suitable for us.