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

On the step-down facility with the nursing homes, for instance, last year we found that some of the nursing homes had contracted beds and in the first two weeks of January, those contracted beds were empty. I refer to the co-ordination about getting people out. People could not get into hospital because there were not beds available. It is about getting people out. Is a better plan in place now?

The other issue with the contract beds is the difference between what a public bed costs in a public nursing home and a private bed. Kilkenny is the best example of all, where the average cost of a public bed in a public nursing home is more than €2,000 per week. As for the average cost of a private nursing home bed, they are getting slightly over €1,000 per bed per week. There is a differential of 98.5% in Kilkenny. That is one example. We have had over 41 nursing homes closed in the past four years, with 1,200 beds gone out of the system. What are we doing as regards making sure that we can get people out of hospital into step-down facilities and the contracts with the private nursing home sector, if the beds are not available in the public nursing homes?