Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On foot of a conversation we had in the House last year about an audit, I requested one. In 2022, the HSE carried out an audit on publicly-funded bed capacity across all nine community healthcare organisations, CHOs. We have 128 HSE public residential care centres for older people, many of which are classed as community hospitals. Subsequently, the HSE completed an in-depth bed reconciliation exercise that validated its publicly-managed residential bed stock. The purpose of this exercise was to reconcile variances derived from the audit and agree particular bed data going forward, with a view to providing accurate information that would identify challenges and support future planning. I agree with the Deputy; this was important post Covid to see exactly how many beds we have. A community bed management system is being developed for the provision of real-time bed data. This will be progressed for roll-out across the HSE in the coming months. In the meantime, the HSE compiles a monthly bed register report of public residential care centres for older persons. As of 31 August, the bed register recorded a total of 256 designated nursing home support scheme beds in Galway, inclusive of all open and temporarily-closed beds. Some 238 of these beds were open, of which 206 were occupied. Data on waiting lists are not collected nationally. This information is held at a local level and is affected by ongoing industrial action. It is extremely frustrating for me, as a Minister of State, that this information is available but is not being passed on at the moment.

To give the Deputy the breakdown, Áras Mhic Dara community nursing unit has 32 beds, Áras Mhuire community nursing unit has 19, Áras Ronáin community nursing unit, with which I am not familiar, has ten, St. Anne's community nursing unit has 21, St Brendan's community nursing unit has 87, Merlin Park community nursing unit 5 and 6 has 25 and Ballinasloe community nursing unit has 44. That comes to 238, of which 206 are currently occupied under the nursing home support scheme, fair deal.

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