Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies for their questions. I signed off on a response to Deputy Nolan’s letter the other day but perhaps it has not made its way to her office. I can confirm 14 private nursing homes closed in 2022, six have closed in 2023, and a further four which are currently active have notified their closure in 2023. Four new centres opened in 2022 and two in 2023. In 2022, there was an overall net increase of 112 registered beds. In 2023, there has been a net increase of 222 so far. That is private nursing homes. I think the figures the Deputy referred to might be nursing homes in the round, including public nursing homes. There may well be an overall decrease but I thought, as she prefaced in her question today, that we were talking about private and voluntary nursing homes, not the public ones. There has been an increase in private nursing home places last year and this year so far.

On the Labour Court recommendation on retained firefighters, the Labour Court is an office of the Government. It heard both sides in the dispute and has made a recommendation. I understand the next step is consultation and balloting. I hope it will go to a ballot and we will see what decision is made after that.

On Cork rail, there are two significant projects. There is metropolitan rail, which Deputy O’Sullivan touched on and which uses the existing train lines. We are keen to get that done as soon as possible. It will be a big addition to Cork. For light rail, it is early days yet and there is a much more complicated piece of work to be done. I agree it would absolutely make sense that the light rail should link up with Kent Station and with the heavy rail. I do not know enough about the geography and engineering to know whether that is possible but it would be a strange thing if the Luas in Dublin was not connected to Connolly or Heuston. I do not know the engineering issues enough to be definitive on that.

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