Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is not correct. For example, if a private nursing home decides to take in someone today and the health of that person deteriorates over the next three or four years, then the standard of care provided and time required to provide that care will increase but the home does not get any increase in the payments to it in three or four years' time, whereas it is a different scenario in a public nursing home. I do not accept that there is a difference although there is some difference in certain cases.

However, we have a scenario where 16 private nursing homes have closed because they could no longer provide the service with the funding they were getting. We also have a situation where a Department has €49 million in funds which is designated for private nursing homes and the private nursing homes have not been told how that is going to be administered and when, all while they are under pressure. It should be remembered that a private nursing home has a good deal of expenditure that a public nursing home does not have, for instance public liability insurance, whereas all the public nursing homes are covered by the HSE insurance. Private nursing homes have commercial rates which must be paid to local authorities. The average 50-bed private nursing home is paying out on average €120,000 per annum between those two items. There is funding available in the Department but the Department is not saying how it is going to deal with the private nursing homes.