Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this important motion. I support the calls that Care Champions have been making for a public inquiry into what happened in our nursing homes throughout the pandemic. We all know there were catastrophic failures in governance in our nursing homes. We saw very high levels of infectious disease and the sad loss of more than 2,000 people.

Staff were put into a nightmare situation where they were not given adequate supports and were left totally unprepared. Many of them also became sick and brought home the virus to their families. It was an extremely difficult situation for the families of those who were sick and those who died. Most people were unable to visit their family members to ensure they were being cared for properly or even to say goodbye.

It was clear from the very beginning that the sector needs widespread reform if vulnerable adults are to be cared for properly and to ensure that staff can work effectively in a safe environment. Many nursing homes found themselves completely unprepared and struggled to cope due to long-standing problems with chronic understaffing, poor governance and a lack of investment. The Government had privatised most of our nursing home sector and left them to it. We cannot wash our hands of our responsibility towards older generations in society. What we need is a full public inquiry into the scandal of nursing home neglect and deaths during the pandemic. We need to find out exactly what the failures were and how we can rectify matters to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again.

We also need to listen to calls for the immediate improvements that families and advocates are calling for. Visitations, for example, are required to safeguard against neglect and isolation. As some nursing homes are still not complying with official guidance, this guidance needs to become law with enforcement powers for HIQA. We also need adult safeguarding legislation and an independent safeguarding authority needs to be created. The Government's response to this has been lacking so far, to put it nicely.

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