Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is a valid question. A huge amount of work has been done in relation to supporting nursing homes since the earlier outbreak. The pandemic bore down hardest on older people in nursing homes. A huge amount of support has been put in place in respect of personal protective equipment, PPE, routine testing every two weeks for staff and the temporary assistance payment, which supports nursing homes financially. The Deputy is right to say that one of the issues that has arisen is a lack of agency staff, especially for rural nursing homes. There are 51 nursing homes with outbreaks at the moment. We are working with a nursing home in County Kerry where 19 staff have contracted Covid, including the manager and the person in charge. It is a really difficult issue. The Covid support teams in the community, the HSE and HIQA are on site and we are working at the moment to come up with a plan. The issue at the moment is it is difficult to have enough agency staff nurses and if someone works in one nursing home today, he or she cannot work in a different nursing home the same day or the next because we are trying to prevent cross-contamination. We have dealt with a huge number of issues related to nursing homes and as the Deputy correctly noted, the one we are facing now is having enough staff to go in. We are conscious of that and I have a meeting scheduled this week with the HSE and the Department on that issue.