Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

HIQA gets involved with nursing homes when they are opening up their doors to residents and it is involved in the regulatory process. Should it be involved earlier in the process? What I mean by this is that I am aware of a number of nursing homes that have been built and developed perhaps 1 km or 2 km outside of a town or village. Not everyone in these nursing homes is physically incapacitated. Many of them need to walk to the village or local shop to buy a newspaper and they cannot do so. Therefore, they rely on relatives to bring those goods to them and slowly but surely they unintentionally become more institutionalised to that nursing home and they cannot leave its environment because there is no infrastructure to take them to the village. That is being addressed this week for schoolgoing children. There is a plan to have schools that are accessible right to the front door and there needs to be something similar put in place for nursing homes. Is it a deficiency on the part of HIQA that those needs are not identified at the outset when these nursing homes are being developed and planned for and that in many cases they are being developed out of towns and villages where the residents never have a chance of getting to those services that they need to avail of?