Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to one issue only in the time available to me, namely, the crisis at Beaumont Residential Care in Cork. As has been said, we have 56 people who are residents of Beaumont Residential Care, who are there on the fair deal scheme and who are facing, to put it mildly, an uncertain and precarious situation. Not all of these residents, although many of them, are people who are frail, suffering from ill health and in some cases suffering from Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.

The first point about this is that under no circumstances whatsoever can we have a situation where a single one of those residents is removed from that place against his or her will or that of his or her relatives, transferred elsewhere against his or her will or that of his or her relatives, or in effect evicted from the place. These things cannot be allowed to happen under any circumstances. Beaumont Residential Care is owned by CareChoice. CareChoice has a chain of 14 nursing homes throughout the State. I think six are in the Cork area. CareChoice is in turn owned by a large French multinational corporation by the name of InfraVia, which invests in various projects throughout the Continent. My understanding of the position is contacts have been made and meetings are to take place between CareChoice and people in positions of power and authority. CareChoice is seeking a higher rate of payment from the National Treatment Purchase Fund and I think talks are to take place immediately or in the short term. Whatever the outcome of those talks, there must not be a single person removed from that place against his or her will or that of his or her relatives or transferred to another place against his or her will or that of his or her relatives. That is the bottom line here and a position I wanted to state strongly.

I will finish with an observation. A number of speakers have made the point that 20 to 25 years ago we had a position where 80%, or four out of five, nursing homes in the State were in public ownership. They were run on a not-for-profit basis. The remaining 20% were run privately for profit. That has completely reversed in the space of those 20 to 25 years and today 20% are in public ownership and run on a not-for-profit basis and 80% are in private hands and run for profit. That has happened after 20 to 25 years of Governments led by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and by the two of them together. We have seen a privatisation of our nursing home sector on the basis of that. If we were to reverse that policy in the morning, the crisis we see at Beaumont Residential Care would not be taking place and indeed could not be taking place. The residents and their relatives would make the contribution they make at present and as the State would own the nursing homes, it would be up to it to cover all the other costs in any case. It could not be any other way. That is the direction we need to point towards. It is the change that needs to take place. We need to go back, as speedily as possible and not in ten or five years' time, to a situation where nursing home care and residential centres in this country are not run for profit and the maximisation of that profit, but for the needs of people. That can only be done when the bulk of those homes are in the hands of society and of the State.

I conclude by saying I hope this issue is resolved immediately or shortly, but the bottom line is there must be nobody removed from or transferred from that place against his or her will or that of his or her relatives. Sin é.

See this speech in context