Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

With all due respect to the Minister of State, I asked for her response and she described the report. She said we have often have had conversations across the floor. That is the problem. All we have is talk from her. There has been no action. Residential care is not the first choice of many older people. What we should be doing, of course, is expanding other options. In May 2020, at the height of Covid, the Taoiseach spoke about the work done by the previous Government to develop alternatives such as supported housing and housing with care. He stated:

... the new Government can and should build on and operationalise this work. We also need to consider a move away from large, modern, newly-built, 150 to 200-bed, single-room nursing homes towards smaller units ...

What, if anything, has the Minister of State done to develop alternatives to the large-scale, investment-focused facilities we are seeing springing up, which older people do not want to be in and which are not in their interest given that they want more independence?

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