Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

We all got texts. I saw the Ceann Comhairle getting agitated, so I thought I should tell him just in case.

The important point is the Government's assertion that competition will create more places. There has been an increase, but where organisations are running nursing home care to generate a profit, it is a problem. A lady in my area was approaching her 95th birthday and was ready to go to a new state-of-the-art nursing home beside Dublin Airport. It was near to her family and so on. Due to the HSE's inability to strike a deal with the private provider, however, that 90-bed facility is essentially lying idle. It has one full-time resident, which has been the case for almost a year. Former hotels in Finglas that are in the ownership of NAMA have been converted into nursing homes to generate profit for their owners. Articles in the business sections of our newspapers laud the business opportunities presented by nursing home care. Why did NAMA not provide this facility to the HSE so that the latter might run the services directly? With hospital staff holding emergency meetings every day about where to send the people occupying hospital beds, a decision could be made in patient's interests to release them to their families instead of on the basis of the diktats of private gain from nursing home care.

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