Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This Bill is welcomed by everybody. I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, for bringing it forward with such haste. The Bill is long overdue. I wish to mention the previous Minister of State, Jim Daly, who worked on the Bill. He probably got some of the legal wrangles sorted out for the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, and I want to acknowledge his work.

It is important that we protect family farms and businesses. It has been an anomaly in the system that there was no cap on the contribution in the same way as there was on a private house. It will make sure that businesses are safe. There is a lot of trauma involved when a member of a family has to go into a nursing home. If there are financial worries as well, it is important that we try to sort them out. The exposure that existed was genuinely a worry for many families with farms or businesses, as it meant they might have to sell the farm or business to pay for the nursing home care.

I wish to refer to a woman in my constituency, Maura Canning, whom I met some eight years ago. She was campaigning on this issue on behalf of farmers and their families. She never gave up, she just kept at it. I acknowledge the work she did on the issue over the years to bring it to this stage. She deserves credit.

I also acknowledge the work that has been carried out by staff in nursing homes in the past 15 months. They have always done the work, but it came to the fore, especially in the family-run nursing homes, how they performed in their duties against all the odds to try to protect as many of their residents as possible. I had first-hand experience of that in Green Park Nursing Home in Tuam where I saw what they were doing. The pandemic was very tough on staff and we must acknowledge the input of every member of staff. We must also acknowledge that when a crisis developed in certain areas, members of the public who had medical training donned their nurses' uniforms again and went back to help out. That is a sign that we are all in it together when it comes to care for the elderly.

I wish to raise the significant differential rates being paid to the private nursing home sector, especially to family-owned nursing homes. This is something I have come across and Nursing Homes Ireland, NHI, has spoken about it on numerous occasions. Different nursing homes are getting different rates of allocation from the HSE and there is no apparent reason for that.

In one case where a nursing home is providing dementia services, the HSE does not recognise that as an additional service that they provide and it refuses to give them any type of increase in their rate. That needs to be examined because there is such a variation in what is being paid to nursing homes, yet the services they provide are the same. That is wrong and needs to be upended to make sure everybody is treated fairly.

Small, private family nursing homes, those that have a 50-bed or 60-bed unit, have to make sure they can meet all their bills. They are providing local employment and they need to be treated with parity and equality. There is no reason different rates should be available to different nursing homes. It is archaic. It is something that was brought in at one stage but now, if percentage increases are being offered, it means the person on the lowest rate will end up with less money. There is also no recognition for specialist units. I request that a review be undertaken as a matter of urgency.

In addition, there is no independent appeals process if people feel aggrieved with the rates they are getting. The process is reviewed within the HSE and it takes months to do that. In the meantime, the nursing home is left on the old rate, which is causing a severe financial burden, especially as they are now investing more and more in safety and in strategies to ensure they deal with every kind of pandemic that arises into the future.

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