Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It disappoints me that the Minister does not understand the context or the seriousness of the problem in the short term. All of the providers who are present, whom I welcome to the Gallery, have been in touch with our party and with the Minister. They are not just making up the crisis that is there. There is a real crisis there at the moment. The Minister stated that the fair deal scheme provides certainties for families and to nursing homes but I remind him that if there are no nursing homes there, then that certainty is gone.

This is similar to the home help provision. If we do not have the providers to provide the care, it is of no use whatsoever. I, along with Deputy Cullinane, spoke with the owners of one family-run intergenerational nursing home. It is not just a business. It has operated for 31 years in County Mayo. It is embedded in the local community and is trusted and valued there. For more than 31 years it has come through recessions, severely hard times, and then Covid-19 on top of all that. Now they are faced with the real possibility of not being able to continue in their business.

The devastation of the closure of the nursing homes was expressed to me by one family in Mayo. They spoke of their mum Bríd, who is 82 years old and has lived with vascular dementia in residential care since 2017. She was a very active woman in her community and was widowed at a young age. She is a mother of three and a grandmother of seven. She is non-verbal now and is cared for in one of the most amazing settings by the most amazing staff. She does not want to be put out of that nursing home nor do her family want that.

We are corporatising the nursing care for our older people. Our older people are not commodities to be shifted around on a chessboard. The question is: what do we want nursing home provision to look like in ten or 20 years? The Ministers talk about reconfiguration. Reconfiguration is no good if all of the nursing homes in Mayo and in the west are closed and are shifted somewhere else. The Ministers need to take control of the situation in the short, medium and the long term. Short-term interventions are also needed. How do we provide care for our elderly people and for those who care for them? This says everything about us as a nation. The Ministers very much have an opportunity here to do the right thing.

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