Ms Fiona Larthwell:

The Deputy has raised an important point about those kinds of costs and funding pressures that come on, which are perhaps unanticipated. When Covid happened, we put in place the temporary assistance payment scheme, TAPS, which the committee will be aware of. That has provided about €145 million to private and voluntary nursing homes to date. In the last couple of weeks, we launched the temporary inflation payment scheme, TIPS, which is aimed at assisting private and voluntary nursing homes with the temporary inflation costs that we are going to see over this winter. That will enable them to claim up to 75% of their energy increases up to €5,250 per month, backdated to July, in order to assist with those particular costs. The NTPF model requires that contracts are set for any time. It could be a year or could be three years. Within that, it is not terribly responsive to pressures. We are looking at ways of trying to be responsive when these really unusual international events are happening.

The other point is that the public and private cost of care differential was examined in the value for money report that was issued last year, which set out nine recommendations. We are working on those at the moment. We would be very concerned about ensuring efficiency in the public cost of care and that private facilities are funded to a reasonable level in order for them to deliver properly regulated care. That is our main focus.