Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is quite right in what she said. We all know the benefits of day care centres. It is one of my priorities to get them open as safely and as securely as possible.

One of the areas where we have seen challenges is in day care centres that were adjacent to or part of amenity nursing units, which were our old style community hospitals. Any place in which there was a day care centre, there were challenges. We still have approximately 70 nursing homes throughout the country with Covid-19. The difficulties were that we were bringing people from outside into an inpatient centre and most of the problems we had were where the day care centre was associated with the community nursing hospital in that particular area.

The Deputy is correct about infection prevention and control, which is important. We learned quickly that some of the day care centres were in community facilities and were not dedicated day care facilities. We have changed that now and the majority of them are now stand-alone day care centres with the correct supports that people need. The Deputy is also correct in that we have to find permanent solutions and that is what we are trying to do but there have to be certain standards.

One area about which I am also worried is that while many people have come back to day care and embraced it, we also have a small cohort who are finding it hard to re-engage and who have not come back to the day care centres. They may have lost their good friend during Covid-19 with whom they used to engage, and this is also an area on which we are putting a focus. I am asking communities to reach out to these people who always went to a day care centre previously and now do not have the heart or are probably afraid to re-engage. I will certainly check out those centres for the Deputy.

I agree with what she said in that it is not appropriate to ask somebody to travel 7 km, who may not have transport, and I believe the Deputy also mentioned a distance of 24 km. That is just not going to happen. I will check those two centres out for the Deputy and I thank her, as usual, for her interest in this matter.

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