Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I want to mention a tangential issue, namely, the crisis affecting nursing homes at present. The Ministers of State will be aware that nursing homes are closing right across the country and that many are blaming what they call fair deal discrimination. These nursing homes claim funding is insufficient to meet their spiralling inflation costs and the figures bear this out. Recently published figures from the HSE show that HSE nursing homes are currently receiving 70% more per resident than private nursing homes, which translates to as much as €744 per resident per week under the fair deal system. This is having a significant effect. I was talking to an individual yesterday who told me that CareChoice, which owns 14 nursing homes around the country, has stated it is pulling out of the fair deal system because of the lack of funding. It states the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, is not negotiating with it in real terms and that it is not even reverting to it on proposals it is making.

One private nursing home with 78 residents under the fair deal scheme stated that it had two months of money left and would no longer accept the fair deal system. This means that the families will either have to find the necessary funds to pay the total cost of the private nursing home or they will have to withdraw their loved ones from it. The former is not an option for most and the vast majority would find the latter option a disaster. The 99-year-old father of a family I know is located in one of these homes. His family do not have the money. If they pull him out of the service, it will significantly discommode him from the secure life he has known for years. They will remove him from all the friendly and recognisable faces he knows and try to find a space for him in a shrinking sector. A woman who is in a secure dementia unit has been told by CareChoice that it can no longer provide that service under the NTPF. CareChoice has stated that the NTPF has only sanctioned €2.28 per day per resident to meet the cost of inflation. This seems extraordinary. I ask that the Ministers of State intervene to ensure that the NTPF is negotiating on a fair basis. It is shocking that, just after the Covid crisis, we are at the precipice of many nursing homes withdrawing from the fair deal system. I understand that both sides may be playing hardball in the negotiations, but this situation is scaring the living daylights out of hundreds of families across the country. I ask the Ministers of State to step in and ensure that we have a system that functions fairly and in which families get equal funding.

Respite is an essential service for many families, not an added extra or a luxury. Many people depend on it. For some, it can even be a matter of life and death. Incredibly, though, 75% of families who are in need of respite are not receiving it. Worse, the provision is in reverse. This is an incredible legacy for any political party. Service levels are falling for people around the country. Like the nursing home and childcare sectors, providers are shutting their doors. Staff are not being trained to the level required to man the system. There is no staff retention because there is not adequate pay and the terms and conditions are not good enough. Recruitment and retention are not rocket science. If you own a shop in a small town, you have to have a recruitment package that is competitive relative to other businesses that are employing the same people. That is not happening in this context.

It is not by accident that people in nursing homes, those who use respite centres and even young people who use childcare seem to be at the bottom of this Government's list of priorities and are not receiving the investment they need. These are the least powerful people in society and, as a result, they get the least from the State. On behalf of exhausted families who are at their wits' end and who are awake night after night looking after loved ones, I plead with the Government to show them that there is some light at the end of the tunnel, to develop a long-term plan that is backed up with multi-annual funding, to pay decent wages to workers and to build a model that does justice to the phenomenal work being done by so many families day after day.

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