Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Sinn Féin spokesperson on older people, I am delighted to speak in broad support of this motion, and I thank the Independent Group for bringing it before the House. According to the 2022 report by Age Action, “Reframing Ageing - The State of Ageing in Ireland 2022”, one in four adults in Ireland is aged 60 or older. When expressed in numbers, that is more than 1 million people. These are individuals with their own identities, life experiences and stories, with different needs and aspirations. Irish people are now living for longer than ever before and the number of people over the age of 65 is expected to double to 1.5 million by 2051. It is essential that we not only have people living for longer, but that those people can live as well as possible. When older people need or choose residential care they need to be sure it is fit for purpose and affordable and can provide whatever level of care they may need in their golden years. After all, nursing homes are not just buildings or businesses; they are homes to those who live in them, as the Minister of State and I both know.

More than 80% of the 32,000 nursing home beds in Ireland are provided by the private and voluntary sector. They are funded by the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, and fair deal schemes on a bed, board and laundry-care model. This is very basic and does not allow any wiggle room for extra expenses. God forbid, a resident in a nursing home under the fair deal scheme needs an occupational therapist or a physiotherapist. They better have the means to pay for it because the scheme does not cover any of it. If the pressure becomes too much and the nursing home closes, residents will find that foreign multinationals are only too eager to add to the 40% of private nursing home beds they already have in their hands.

The care of our older people should not and cannot come down to a race to the bottom for the lowest cost and the organisations that make the biggest profits. Older people’s care is not and should not be a commodity to be traded off to the lowest bidder. It has to be about quality of care and not quantity of profit. Given the added stress of the staff recruitment and retention crisis and the lack of parity of wages, this is a recipe for disaster. Change needs to happen now before it is too late and Sinn Féin in government would bring that change. For example, we would ensure the NTPF is sufficiently resourced to negotiate viable pricing for those nursing homes that are operating at a loss due to unreasonable price pressures and increasing complexity of care costs. We would future-proof the model of care for older people through a commission on care, ensure a living wage for nursing home sector workers and put forward a collective pay agreement. We would address the viability of loss-making nursing homes through a review of the fair deal pricing mechanism - one size does not fit all - by ensuring resources are allocated on the basis of individual residents’ needs and not just a bed, board and laundry basis. This would prevent a race to the bottom regarding cost and quality.

Our elderly and older people have suffered enough in recent years and the scars of Covid-19 are still fresh. I have asked several times when we will have a commencement date for the Covid-19 inquiry. Will it be in the lifetime of this Dáil? Will those who are seeking justice and closure for their loved ones in this case have to wait for years to be recognised?

Yesterday, I hosted Shane Scanlan of The Alliance and his guests in the audiovisual room. Like the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, I will have some questions on that.

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