Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy knows, private and most voluntary nursing homes agree the price that they can charge for a fair deal resident with the designated State agency, which is the NTPF. This is not a political negotiation. It is done by a State agency that is there to do that. Maximum prices for individual nursing homes are agreed with the NTPF following negotiations and based on the NTPF's cost criteria such as costs reasonably incurred by the nursing home, local market prices, historical prices that have been paid and overall budgetary capacity. A significant change that the NTPF has recently made to its negotiation process is for nursing home providers to agree a shorter contract duration of 12 months. This aims to ensure that NTPF rate increases stay aligned with any cost pressure increases that occur over the course of the contract period. In other words, I think there is a recognition in the system now that we have had a lot of disruption in terms of costs and a lot of increases that have happened at short notice. This has impacted disproportionately on a lot of smaller nursing homes and the NTPF negotiation process is now trying to respond to that appropriately.

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