Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Bill and commend the Minister of State on it. I also applaud the civil servants and the previous Ministers who completed some of the groundwork for this legislation. Maura Canning has also done enormous work on this issue. I have spoken previously on this legislation and I am aware that Sinn Féin tabled a motion yesterday on nursing homes. I will outline a number of concerns I have. Just a few hours ago, a document was released to me by the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, which is signed by the contract manager of the NTPF. I have it to hand and I will furnish it to the Minister of State after the debate. It is an extraordinary document. According to it, an email was sent by the NTPF to nursing homes at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 12 March 2020. The NTPF stated that it had been asked to establish capacity within nursing homes. It warned nursing homes that they needed "... to have the ability to care for patients coming from an acute hospital setting ..." The individual facilities, the letter says, would co-ordinate with the discharge units in the hospitals directly. It goes on:

Facilities must be able to facilitate short term residents being discharged from the acute hospital. These residents ... may be nominated by the HSE or the Department of Health as applicable for receipt of appropriate funding.

Was it the Minister of State's Department that instructed the NTPF to put money before nursing homes and instruct the homes to make way for a large surge of hospital transfers? Was there a concerted effort by the Department and the HSE in March last year-----

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