Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

No. We will not outsource services like that to nursing homes. Nursing homes already have contract arrangements to provide long-term care. We have 30,000 long-term care beds in the country, some 21,000 of which are in the private nursing home sector, while 9,000 are in the public nursing home sector. The fair deal is working successfully. We do not anticipate outsourcing more activity of the kind the Deputy suggests. We want to ensure that our public hospitals work as effectively and efficiently as possible and that those who work in our hospitals provide services that are performed to best practice from a staffing, industrial relations and operational point of view. That is what the Croke Park agreement is all about.

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