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

The next issue I want to raise is one I have raised previously and it is the ratio of people employed in public nursing homes and the number of beds available. My understanding is that in quite a number of public nursing homes, the number of beds was reduced but the staffing levels were not reduced. There was one nursing home in particular in the Laois-Offaly area that I raised. What progress has been made in resolving this issue? On the one hand we are speaking about a staff embargo and, at the same time, we are not getting value for money with regard to the number of people employed. What are we doing about this?

Can we have a figure on the total number of beds that are actively used in public nursing homes throughout the country? An accurate figure is not being produced for us. We can get accurate figures for hospital beds but we are not getting any figure for the number of public beds in public nursing homes that were there in 2019. I accept that changes had to be made because of Covid. Previously, there might have been two beds in a room but now it is not possible to have this and it is not safe to do so in certain cases. The staffing ratio has totally changed. How are we dealing with this issue? We have a large number of staff and a very low number of beds in the case of the particular nursing home I raised previously.