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

While I understand that some nursing homes are closing, there are new ones opening all the time. An additional €45 million has been allocated for nursing homes in the budget for next year, including €10 million set aside to aid private and voluntary nursing homes that are struggling with Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA compliance. We are very conscious of the financial challenges faced by the nursing home sector, especially the smaller and voluntary nursing homes that might not have access to the economies of scale that larger nursing homes or groups would.

The Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Mary Butler, has regular interactions with the NTPF and has met with it to discuss ways to help the sector, where necessary and appropriate, to complement the normal process of negotiating rate increases when contracts are renewed. Anyone who has a scheduled renegotiation of their deed of agreement this year with the NTPF has seen a significant uplift. The average baseline increase in price per bed has been between 6% and 7%, which of course runs ahead of the rate of inflation for this year and ahead of the average rate of wage growth.

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