Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On the Fair Deal scheme, there are many private nursing homes, which, although they are run for profit, are essentially doing the same job as the community hospitals were doing for the HSE, which has now outsourced it at a fixed price to the private sector. They may make a profit, but that is possible - the Minister of State did make a distinction between charitable and not-for-profit organisations. Many profit-making organisations have charitable status. There are many organisations that exist for profit but do charitable work and have a legitimate charity number from the Revenue Commissioners. There is confusion between what is a charitable organisation, what is a not-for-profit organisation, and what is a profit-making organisation, and in fact they can all combine. An organisation may be run for profit but may also have a charitable tax number.

Time is running out. I had intended to call a full Dáil vote on this, but I want to do that on the passage of the legislation.

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