Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If the Deputy gives me a chance to answer, I will try to address some of the issues he raised. He started off by talking about the surplus of €45 million. My understanding is that we continue to provide the temporary assistance payment to any nursing home that has a Covid outbreak. This will run up to the last day of the month and into the new year. Part of the temporary assistance scheme will be funded from that.

I have secured an extra €41 million for the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, next year for the private, public and voluntary sectors so there will be an uplift next year. One of the areas that does not get any recognition from the private nursing homes is €70 million in free personal protective equipment, PPE, and oxygen has been provided since April 2020. This year, the cost of PPE provided to private and voluntary nursing homes is €23 million. I will add the caveat that the voluntary sector accounts for 3.7% of that. The Deputy will also be aware that I put in place a scheme, backdated to 1 July, called the temporary inflation payment, which will cover 75% of energy costs. Each nursing home is entitled to claim up to €31,500 up to the end of this year. We will certainly keep that under review.

Regarding the nursing homes that closed, the records provided to me show that 18 nursing homes have closed this year, with a reduction of 514 registered beds. This includes two nursing homes with a total of 43 beds that were not active. Four nursing homes have opened with a total of 448 registered beds. However, I accept that even though we do not have a net loss of more than 30 or 40 beds, it is very problematic if three or four small nursing homes close in an area as that could be a challenge in respect of capacity.

We are considering a couple of issues. I believe private nursing home providers should negotiate their fee with the NTPF on a yearly basis as opposed to every 18 months or two years. Neither I nor the Minister can intervene in respect of the rate set by the NTPF.

Quite a number of small family-run and voluntary nursing homes could face challenges with regard to HIQA compliance, for example, as regards fire safety audits, many of which have been carried in the past two years, and ligature issues. We are looking at this issue to see if we can provide any support.