Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the move to address a long-standing issue affecting business owners and farming families under the fair deal scheme. This issue has been raised many times by my constituents. Unfortunately, the move will come too late for many families who will not be able to claw back thousands of euro in fees already paid.

While the Bill is a welcome move, we need to do more to facilitate a greater number of older people in ageing in place. We need to increase funding for the home help scheme to deliver for all older people. Our older people have been an afterthought for successive Governments but were to the fore when cuts were made, as in the case of Fine Gael and the Labour Party during the austerity years.

Sinn Féin in government will introduce a statutory home care scheme. We will increase the role of the public and not-for-profit sectors in the provision of home supports. For too long, our older people have been commodified like our early childhood education, housing and health services and many other public services. I do not mean the small family-run nursing homes that provide a modest income for owners and much-needed employment in rural areas. Rather, I mean companies like Orpea, which recently became the largest provider of nursing home places in the country with almost 2,000 places, and Bartra, which has a number of large nursing homes, including a 146-bed facility that is under construction in Clondalkin and apparently includes co-living staff accommodation. Profit should not be the primary motivation for the provision of older persons' care. We in Sinn Féin favour public nursing homes and, until there are sufficient public places available, a strongly regulated private nursing home sector.

We have learned many lessons during the pandemic. One is that concentrated care of our older people is far from ideal. They should be supported in living in their own homes for as long as possible, if that is what they want. The Minister of State and I have discussed this at several meetings. There are many examples of international best practice, such as the Green House model and the Eden Alternative. These favour ageing in place or in small congregations of purpose-built or redesigned homes, with appropriate supports.

I commend the book by Mr. Pat O'Mahony from Newbridge, entitled Rethinking Housing Options for Senior Citizens. It makes some interesting proposals and international comparisons as regards retirement villages. We need to accelerate our provision of housing for older people before demographics overtake us and we end up in the same place as we are with schools, where some students still do not know if they will have places in their local schools in just over three months' time.

I wish to raise an issue that was brought to the attention of the Committee of Public Accounts recently by my colleague, Deputy Munster. She raised the matter of residents in private nursing homes having to pay for items that they were entitled to free of charge under their medical cards and the practice of applying increases to residents' bills as a result of a change in their medical needs despite this being prohibited by the legislation for scheme-supported residents. By law, nursing homes should not be charging patients for items such as incontinence pads, wound dressings, sore creams and medications that residents are entitled to free of charge under their medical cards. This smacks of profiteering on the part of nursing home operators. It is not acceptable and anyone found responsible must be held accountable. People in nursing homes can be vulnerable.

We must ensure that those who are tasked with looking after them are not taking advantage. They certainly are taking advantage if they are doing the things I mentioned. We need to put a stop to those disgraceful practices. The treating of our older people as cash cows must stop immediately.

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