Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will be very brief. I thank the Minister of State for taking the time to be present at the committee meeting and for engaging on this issue. We have gone through this on numerous occasions at the petitions committee and I have raised it with the Minister of State in the Dáil. I wish to touch on the issue of the additional charges. I note what the Minister of State said in his speech about the reports coming before him and that he hopes to examine them. Will he issue specific instructions as opposed to just looking for transparency as to how this will actually be invoked? Another matter I discussed with him previously is that representatives of Nursing Homes Ireland came before us at the Committee of Public Accounts as well and they claim they are under financial strain and that many of their members and smaller operations are being forced out of business due to the operating margins. On the one hand, therefore, we are here as parliamentarians asking the Minister of State about transparency on additional charges while, on the other, these representatives are coming before us at other committees saying they are under extreme financial strain and that they are going to go out of business. Then we see reports on bed capacity in certain counties over the coming years. I would like to hear the Minister of State's thoughts on these issues.