Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Minister of State for his opening remarks. First, I commend the whistleblowers on this. I keep saying here that you get absolutely battered for helping people and telling the truth in this country. The Irish population is ageing and growing, which is associated with higher levels of ill health and greater demand on all types of health and social care services. This obviously poses great challenges but we in Sinn Féin believe we should see improved health as an opportunity as well as a challenge, celebrating and enabling the contribution older people make to our communities while building a health service that cares for us as we age. In the words of the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil, we are committed to the care and support of Ireland’s older people “who shall not be regarded as a burden, but rather entitled to the Nation's gratitude and consideration”. The footage shown on the “Prime Time Investigates” programme on Emeis nursing homes was far from showing our older people gratitude and consideration. It was shocking, disturbing and nothing short of abuse. Too many elderly people in our country are living in facilities that are underfunded, understaffed and under-regulated. When I saw the footage of a frail female resident with dementia, considered a serious fall risk, being left alone on the edge of her bed for seven minutes at night while confused and agitated and seeking a toilet break, I thought of my own 79-year-old mother and how angry and let down I would feel if that were her. Families are now lying awake at night wondering if their loved ones are safe, whether their basic needs are being met and if they are being treated with the compassion and respect they deserve. Families should be able to trust that facilities are meeting the standards our elders deserve.

Even with greatly enhanced home and community care for older people, many families still have to make the difficult decision to place their loved ones in a nursing home as they require full-time care. Given this, it is essential that people are supported in long-term residential care and that the highest standards are maintained. We need to ensure that safe, clean and dignified conditions are maintained in all our nursing homes. We cannot continue to rely on HIQA alone. Sinn Féin has long called for adult safeguarding legislation, mandatory reporting of abuse and a legal right of entry for social care teams to investigate complaints. The “Prime Time Investigates” programme proved just how critical those reforms are to prevent neglect and abuse. Sinn Féin calls on the Government to immediately enact the adult safeguarding legislation as this would provide a legal framework to support safeguarding, additional powers for social workers and relevant social care professionals and agencies separate from the HSE, which is empowered to oversee safeguarding policy and practices across the public and private sector and in the home. We need to legislate to provide the legal right of entry to any designated care centre for relevant social workers and social care professionals.

Nursing home staff are overworked and underpaid. They are doing their best and that is all they can do in their impossible circumstances. They deserve better training, fair wages and the resources necessary to provide high-quality care. Currently, they are being left without the most basic items such as bedsheets, towels, sanitary wipes and gloves. To add insult to injury, families face high costs to pay for this long-term care.

There has been next to no investment in public care homes. Over 70% of our nursing home capacity is now private. This was facilitated and enabled by successive Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil Governments and this is the result. When profit is prioritised over people, it is always the vulnerable who pay the price. In this instance, it was our older generations.

The privatisation of nursing home care cannot come at the expense of quality and care. We need to tip the balance back in favour of public capacity with robust regulations and the appropriate safeguarding and protection. If we do not do this, in the words of Professor David Robinson, a consultant geriatrician in St. James's Hospital, "This is going to shorten people’s lives and the lives that they have will be more miserable because of the situation that they’re in".

This is not a matter for tomorrow. This needs to be addressed urgently. The cost of inaction will be measured in human suffering. We owe our elders not only respect but our action. The Government has a responsibility to protect the most vulnerable in our society and I call on it to make elder care a national priority not next year, after the next crisis, but now.

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