Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am taking this debate on behalf of the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, who has responsibility for nursing homes. I thank Deputy O'Dowd for raising this matter in the House.

The Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, is the independent authority established under the Health Act 2007 to drive continuous improvement and to monitor safety and quality in Ireland's health and personal social care services. Since 2009 all nursing homes - public, voluntary and private have been registered and inspected by HIQA. The Government also extended HIQA's function to residential services for those with disabilities and child-protection services. In addition, we are committed to introducing a regulatory system for home-care services, making them subject to registration and inspection by HIQA, on which work has already commenced.

As regulator, HIQA's remit is to inspect facilities and services rather than investigate individual complaints. Nursing home operators must ensure all reasonable measures are taken to protect residents from all forms of abuse. They must have policies and procedures in place for the prevention and detection of, and the response to abuse. Furthermore, operators must notify HIQA of any allegation of abuse or serious adverse incidents that occur in a nursing home.

All nursing homes are required to have an accessible and effective complaints procedure of their own, including an appeals process. They must investigate all complaints promptly and following investigation, put in place any measures required for improvement. They must keep a record of complaints made, and this record must be available for inspection enabling HIQA when it carries out an inspection to determine whether the nursing home's complaints system is sufficiently robust.

In addition to this, HIQA takes into account and uses all information received, to inform and plan its regulatory activity. Information on individual cases can provide useful pointers in this regard. HIQA's programme of scheduled and unannounced inspections helps to ensure standards are maintained and where issues of non-compliance arise, that these are addressed and rectified. The Department of Health, in consultation with HIQA and service providers, is working to improve and update the requirements that apply to nursing home care.

Lest there be any concerns about this I want to clarify that with public HSE nursing homes, people can make a complaint through the HSE complaint system. If they are not happy with the HSE complaint system, they can go to the Office of the Ombudsman for an independent complaint. Private nursing homes are supposed to have in place their own complaints procedure and to have an appeals mechanism. For both public and private nursing homes a complaint about elder abuse can be made directly to the HSE. The HSE's elder abuse services have 30 senior case-workers who work on exactly that.

HIQA's role is different. Currently HIQA's role is not to deal with individual complaints but to be a regulator and inspectorate. Any change to that role would not be a simple amendment; it would be a major change in the role of that organisation and would require it to be resourced very differently from now in addition to a change in legislation.

See this speech in context