Ms Laura Magahy:

I may need to come back to the Deputy on some of his questions and I thank him for his kind observations at the outset.

On public nursing homes and the public response, it is interesting that HIQA was going to do a consumer survey on that and it was paused due to Covid-19. It was one of the things that we are very interested in getting citizens’ feedback on what they think about it.

We are slight outliers in that we have more people going into nursing homes than in other countries. One of our main goals is to increase the number of people who can stay well and be enabled to stay well in their own homes. The Deputy may have seen some of the programmes referring to healthy communities as outlined by Mr. Straton earlier. Another one that we did not have a chance to talk about is Age Friendly Ireland's healthy homes programmes. We have funded 11 age friendly co-ordinators in each of the local authorities on a pilot basis to have a conversation with people who are deemed to be vulnerable to identify what supports they may need to stay in their own homes. This may involve rightsizing, a warmer home, occupational therapy requirements for the home and how can people be enabled to stay longer in their own homes. It has just started and the co-ordinators are in place. We have set ambitious targets to see can we reduce these needs by putting the requirements in upfront in a co-ordinated way so the people can stay well in their own homes for longer. This is an inter-agency approach, which involves the housing Department, local authorities, Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland and, obviously, the HSE from a clinical perspective. We are very interested in this project because we are outliers in respect of institutional care as opposed to trying to keep people well in their own homes.

The Deputy’s proposition on respite on the home site is very interesting and is one I will take away and talk to colleagues in the Department about to see what the thinking is or could be on that. If there are examples of other places in which this has worked, we will be very interested in hearing about that. He is correct in that people want to stay well in or near to their own homes and, indeed, that people who require care are also looked after near to the family residence. We would be very interested in hearing more about that if he has any suggestions around that idea.