Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is one of the most important questions any of us can ask right now. I acknowledge that in my time on the committee, the Deputy was a tireless advocate on exactly this question and making sure these measures were in place.

"Yes" is the short answer. We have a useful report from HIQA, which examined half of nursing homes that did not have Covid outbreaks and assessed them under a wide variety of measures regarding their preparedness for a second wave. I have written to HIQA and asked it to do the same for the other half.

We had a very comprehensive report from the nursing homes expert group. They made 86 recommendations under 15 themes. We launched it last week. We have set up an implementation team, including the stakeholders that need to be involved. They also have expert advice from people who were involved in writing the original report. They will come back to me soon regarding the additional measures that need to be put in place. The Government's goal is to make sure that everything that can be done is done for all nursing homes.

I believe the nursing home recommendations were superb. Some were short-term. In fact, we already have some of them in place. There were medium-term ones. They also took a look at the much broader questions around whether the regulation of care for older people in this country is good enough. It is a point the Deputy has raised repeatedly. The answer, of course, is, "No, it is not." They have also given us direction in terms of the work we must do in this Government to improve elder care, be it in nursing homes or in hospitals, or, of course, at home. We have seen some striking figures for other countries, particularly in Scandinavia, in terms of the percentage of people who can live in their older years at home as opposed to going into nursing homes if they have the supports at home they should have, and which we want to take a close look at making sure happens.