Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach for the reply but I am astonished to think that the Taoiseach said he knew about this - and obviously the Taoiseach and other Ministers must know about this - but they have no solution. The nursing home is closing and there are 22 residents in that nursing home. They have no home to go to. The Government has no backup plan other than someone will talk to someone. As far as I am aware a six-month notice to patients is the very least. That is not even going to work here. They are being booted out after two months and the Government will just stand idly by and allow that to happen. Instead, some kind of a system needs to be set in place. Surely to God this has happened somewhere else in the country. Is the Government just abandoning people because they are old people who cannot speak for themselves and cannot stand up and say this is wrong?

HIQA has standards and we must respect that those standards have to be met. But if the standards are to be met in community hospitals funding is given by the Government to do that. When the standard must be met in a nursing home the private operators cannot afford some of these standards. Still, HIQA has no standards when there is overcrowding in Cork University Hospital or University Hospital Limerick or many more places. There are no worries about standards there but there are when it is the standards in this case. I do not mind that we stand by standards but these people need to have an answer here today. They cannot be waiting to be wheeled out in a wheelchair in three weeks' time and taken home, perhaps to a house here there is nobody left. The Government has turned its back on the people of Belgooly and its surrounds. I ask the Taoiseach to give me an answer.

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