Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

It will provide for the first time for a statutory office, an office for the chief inspector of social services with specific responsibilities for registration and inspection in all nursing home places.

New standards for long-term residential care facilities for older people have been prepared. I am not saying everything is up to 100% in every single place in the country. If it was, we would not have had the working group report, we would not be bringing in legislation and we would not have had Professor O'Neill's report. We have put enormous resources into the HSE and we are putting legislation in place in this area. The last legislation in 1993, by and large, covered most of this ground. It is time to improve it now as time has moved on, although it is a relatively recent Act.

I dislike the effort — it is the easiest thing in the world to do — to find something somewhere and paint it as if it is the practice everywhere.

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