Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)

It is amazing that the Taoiseach does not feel he has any lessons to learn from having opened this facility. It appears that in early May, the Government shelved plans by the former Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Micheál Martin, to develop 850 beds in community nursing units in the east and south as part of a PPP arrangement on the grounds that the plans would have breached the Government's HSE employment ceiling. I wonder whether the former Minister's announcement regarding the 850 beds, a commitment that he later abandoned, was made with the knowledge of the concerns of the Department of Finance.

Is it not the case that this type of tax relief is making a considerable amount of money for some people and that the State is effectively abdicating responsibility for ensuring standards are maintained and people are treated with dignity? Is it not the case that one of the reasons for such lax enforcement of standards is that there is no spare capacity if an inspector goes into a nursing home and decides that it must be closed? In many cases, there is nowhere for patients from substandard nursing homes to go. The Taoiseach mentioned that patients at the nursing home featured in the "Prime Time" programme did not want to leave it but surely this is not the point. The point should be that if a nursing home must be closed down there should not be the option for people to stay put. One of the reasons places like this are not closed down is that the State has not provided for the spare capacity to allow such a decision to be made.

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