Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 19 May 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Briefing by Department of Health Officials

Photo of Fergus O'DowdFergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I propose to use two and half minutes. I have one question and I ask the witnesses to respond as they wish. First, I congratulate them on their excellent professionalism, their work and their credibility. I want to tell all the health workers who have given so much to all of us, and all the essential workers in the country, how much we respect them for what they have done.

I want to ask a question about all of those people who, sadly, have passed away in our nursing homes. I know it is not just in Ireland that this is happening but all over the world. If we want to benchmark the state of our nursing homes, public and private, the most recently published data, which are from August 2019, show there were 31,000 residents in 581 homes. Only 123 of those 581 homes were fully compliant with the HIQA regulations. Compliance was down from 27% in 2017 to 23% in 2018. Compliance with regulation 27, which deals specifically with infection control, was inspected by HIQA in only 215 of those 581 homes in 2018. Of those, 37 were found to be non-compliant. As such, non-compliance in providing very basic protection for residents in terms of infection control stood at 18%.

The HIQA report also found rates of non-compliance in the areas of governance management, fire precautions, residents' rights, risk management, and training and staff development of 32%, 34%, 27%, 22% and 19%, respectively. Were the witnesses aware of this or did HIQA advise them of it? What benchmark were they were given for the fight they had to fight, given that their hands were clearly tied by virtue of the fact that this was a new virus the world had never seen before? As they acknowledge, we knew that nursing homes were the most vulnerable. We knew from the evidence that this would be the case. My question is very clear. Can the witnesses give an absolute and categorical assurance to me now that all nursing homes, public and private, in this State are fully compliant in terms of infection control?

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