Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)

I was particularly concerned about the RTÉ programme because one of the nursing homes, Beneavin Manor, is in my constituency. I live five minutes' walk from that home. It is part of a campus comprising three nursing homes that are operated separately by Emeis. I took many calls this week from people who are genuinely concerned about the welfare of their relatives in the home. They are genuinely concerned about nursing home care in general, but in particular about the small number of people shown in the programme whose basic care was neglected, which had a big impact on them. There must be accountability – individual accountability for staff and corporate accountability on the part of the company. We should not allow any investigation we carry out to absolve those people over what happened. There was a basic lack of compassion.

We must also look at the structural issues. TDs in our area received a briefing from HIQA. Over two days, there were three teams of two people in each of the three nursing homes on the Beneavin campus.

We can ask HIQA questions about the methodology when its representatives come before use, but the funding of the nursing homes support scheme, the fair deal, must also be examined. My understanding is that far in excess of €6 million was paid to the Beneavin campus, which is a significant amount of money. If people do not have basic hygiene products to hand, is that a matter for HIQA or the company that is running the place? We must get to the bottom of it. I ask that the accountable officer for the nursing homes support scheme would be with us, if that is possible, when we have the meeting.