Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Bill, in so far as it goes but it is very limited. The Minister of State knows very well that so much more needs to be done regarding nursing homes. I find it hard to understand why she is only dealing with this very limited number of improvements to the inspection and oversight regime. For a start, she promised that a statutory right to home care would be introduced. That promise has been made since 2018. She has repeated it several times but there is no sign of it. When is it actually going to happen? It is an equally important to introduce that statutory right because what is happening at the moment, given the statutory right to the fair deal scheme, is that people are being funnelled into nursing homes who actually should not and do not want to be there. They would be much better off and would much prefer to be in their own homes with home care.

The Minister of State has actually come down very much in favour of a very privatised, commercial model of care for older people and that is a real problem. We saw the effect of that during Covid. At that time the Taoiseach and the then Minister for Health both promised a complete review of the big, large-scale, single-room nursing homes that are not conducive to well-being for older people but the Government has done nothing about promoting a more domestic model of care, either in small nursing homes or, preferably, for people to stay in their own homes. That has been really remiss of the Minister of State during her term of office. We are four and a half years in and essentially, we are no closer to having a statutory right to home care and we are continuing to funnel older people into circumstances that are far from ideal for them. I do not know why the Minister of State is doing this. She is promoting very large-scale nursing homes, with up to 200 beds, which are an entirely inappropriate setting for older people. She is not providing them with the choice they should have and that is very remiss of her. I have given her the benefit of the doubt throughout her term of office but she has not acted on this. In terms of a Minister of State with responsibility for older people, it would be a primary responsibility to deal with the issue of the optimum model of care for older people. We will pursue that issue at this committee but it is really regrettable that older people are given very little choice.

I also have concerns about some aspects of this in terms of the preferential treatment being given to members of the farming community, which is entirely different from the approach that the Minister of State has taken to inheritance for urban or non-farming families. There is big pressure on in here and strong lobbying by the farming community and the Minister of State is creating an imbalance.

The other issue relates to the mental health aspects of this and the mental health tribunals. While this is not core to the Bill, she could take the opportunity, as is her prerogative, to introduce a much-needed amendment to give the Mental Health Commission responsibility for the oversight of CAMHS. Yesterday I attended another meeting hosted by Families for Reform of CAMHS who laid out a litany of disgraceful treatment of children with mental health issues. Their primary, single call was for the Mental Health Commission to be given responsibility for the regulation of CAMHS. The Minister of State could have done that in this Bill.