Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Fitzmaurice raises a number of issues. He will be aware of the constraints placed on the Government in recent years in respect of the availability of money and the capacity to spend. That is the reason the public private partnership concept was brought into being and is, for example, delivering the extension of the motorway from Gort to Tuam at a cost of nearly €600 million. It is also delivering exceptionally high quality schools for children who need them at primary and secondary level as a matter of urgency. We did not have the capacity to deal with this issue because of the state of the public finances. Changes have been brought about in the operation of public private partnerships to make them more acceptable, effective and streamlined. However, these are difficult and complex contracts. In cases where projects have been delivered under public private partnerships, they have been built on time and on budget using contracts of 25 years. People in communities where schools and so on have been provided have seen very quick results.

As the Deputy is aware, the Health Information and Quality Authority was set up as an independent authority to make unannounced visits to facilities in any location and assess their quality. HIQA has brought to light some very unsavoury practices, inferior facilities and inferior attention to elderly people. The elderly person to whom the Deputy spoke in Roscommon must be treated with the same dignity and afforded the same quality of treatment as everybody else. However, the fact is that numbers of elderly people are living in homes in which facilities are inferior. In many cases, the buildings are very old and the quality of facilities is not up to standard.

I agree with Deputy Fitzmaurice that there are some people in these homes who would like to have another person accommodated in the room. However, HIQA has raised the standards laid out for single-occupancy rooms, including in respect of access, visibility for staff and so forth. People often tell me they would love to have somebody to talk to or someone else in the room. This depends on the individual's mentality, circumstances or, perhaps, his or her condition, for example, if dementia is advanced. The Government must deal with the reports of the Health Information and Quality Authority in respect of inadequate and poor quality facilities in some homes and institutions. That is the reason the Minister of State made the reference she did.

To be honest, I will not give a definitive answer about any of the ten or 11 homes that need to be-----

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