Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The new HIQA Bill will be in the House next month and will govern quality standards across the health service. The factual position is that the training programme for inspections teams has been developed, resources have been identified for dedicated nursing home inspection teams, and the 32 elder abuse officers are being recruited. The working group on nursing home inspections and registrations has produced its report which is being implemented.

The inspection teams of environmental health officers tend to visit on their own. Multi-disciplinary teams of doctors, nurses and environmental health officers attend. The HSE states that in some cases where environmental health officers carry out an inspection alone, the medical officer and nurse member of the inspection teams will carry out a further inspection of nursing and medical issues as soon as possible thereafter. All inspections are now unannounced and operate under the 1993 regulations to the effect that the current registration certificate must be displayed in a prominent place in the nursing home to show that it is being inspected and is registered. These procedures take place.

I am sure most of the people working in these homes do their utmost to comply fully with these standards, if not to meet even higher ones. The new legislation will be introduced shortly. The Health Bill 2006 will put the social services inspectorate on a statutory basis and contain provisions to underpin a better inspectoral system. Any conditions attached to the registration appearing in the nursing homes registration certificate must be on display in the homes. The HSE and the non-statutory HIQA organisation, deal with all these issues in the best possible way.

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