Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste has often acknowledged the heavy burden that older people have borne during the Covid crisis. We saw the acute crisis in nursing homes, with many vulnerable people and many deaths there. Today, we read that one in five directors of nursing homes plans to quit. We have seen necessary care postponed for older people and isolation hollowing out their lives. Is it now time to rebalance our policy towards older people to put greater emphasis on being able to live independently? I welcome the new carers' policy, the pilot for homecare model, but we need new impetus to drive this so that coming out of Covid we have knowledge that older people need to be cared for in a different way.

See this speech in context