Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests from the HSE and the Department of Health who are joining us this morning.

As I have a short window, I will jump straight into it. I will focus first just on the redeployment of HSE nursing home staff. Back in December 2021, the Department of Health published the value for money review on nursing home care costs and its corresponding response to the recommendations. I think there were nine recommendations outlined. Recommendations Nos. 4, 5 and 6 are related to the examination around operations, agency staff and costs within the public nursing service. The rationale around recommendation No. 5 stated that the biggest driver to cost differentials is staffing levels, and public nursing homes have approximately 2.5 times as many nurses to residents as private nursing homes. Recommendation No. 6 outlined that an extensive review, an audit process, would be established and the HSE care staff are not contracted to specific nursing homes, but instead to community healthcare organisations, CHOs. It was agreed by the Department of Health and the HSE that the recommendations would be reviewed and combined with the deployment of the single assessment tool and other existing work streams to inform the development of any new service models. My first question is directed to Mr. Reid around the HSE care staff being contracted to CHOs rather than individual nursing homes. Is there a system to allow for staff to be easily transferred among public health nursing homes?