Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This Bill has merit as regards the fair deal scheme and family farms and businesses. I am sure there is great regret in homes across the State that funds that went out cannot be recouped. The care of their elderly is preoccupying many families at the moment and it never stops, because true as night follows day, we are all getting older. There is just no way out of that.

While the fair deal aspect of the Bill has merit, I regret that it takes no proper account of the ongoing privatisation and commodification of the nursing home sector, where personal and State money is increasingly going to global wealth funds. We should be asking questions about this in our Parliament, here in the Dáil, and in public, because it is degrading and diminishing for our older people that their needs as they age are the subject of international profit and speculation. We learned last week that French healthcare giant Orpea is to become the biggest provider in the nursing home market. Orpea was reported as having a half-year revenue to June 2019 of €1.9 billion. That is almost €2 billion revenue in six months alone. This is serious business news with equally serious social consequences. We are talking about wealth fund billions for the essential care of our own people, who worked hard, raised their families, bought their homes and paid their taxes all their lives. I do not see anything in this Bill at this stage addressing how the care of our older people is being increasingly profitised and commodified. That is everyone’s business because if we are lucky, we will all live to be old and the care being speculated on as a market commodity will be our own.

I know I speak for vast numbers of my constituents when I say we would like to age under our own steam and in our own communities wherever possible. That is why in government, Sinn Féin will establish a statutory home care scheme, in order that our care is based around our needs, as opposed to our experience of ageing being made to fit the preferred care model. A model that favours private profit over public service is just not acceptable. I am not referring to the small, family-run private nursing homes. I am referring to the huge investors and wealth funds. We have been talking about these funds coming into our housing market but they are taking over our nursing homes as well. We have to see elder care as a necessity and a right. We would rather have supports for community living than the elevation of the nursing home model, and the private nursing home model at that. However, it is inevitable that some of us will require nursing home care and we favour the public model in that necessary instance. It can come as quite a shock to people to find out that only 20% of our nursing homes are in public ownership. Just as with housing and childcare, elder care should never be commodified, because these are not options or luxuries. These are essentials of living in which we, as citizens of this State, should not be placed at the mercy of profit and the market.

It should be the same as in housing and childcare and in the care of older persons. I believe it is fair to say that in the social contract, there is no deal, fair or otherwise, about that.

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