Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Here we go again about nursing homes. A scandal has given us cause to talk about nursing homes. All the details of that scandal have been outlined. I am not going to outline them again. It is bewildering that HIQA had a report on one of the homes, Beneavin, in November, and it was substantially compliant. That in itself is frightening. I looked to remember, because my memory is faulty, when we closed St. Francis Nursing Home in Galway. On the streets of Galway, in 2011, over a winter period, we gathered more than 20,000 signatures, begging the Health Service Executive not to close St. Francis Nursing Home. It ignored the people of Galway and the signatures, and it closed the nursing home. We managed to keep it open as a primary care centre. I am using that as an example.

Around that time, I travelled to Portlaoise too, where the HSE was closing a public nursing home in Deputy Fleming's constituency. I cannot remember what happened with that. We joined forces. That was back in 2010 and 2011, when we said the writing was on the wall with the closure of public nursing homes. That started earlier with Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats' philosophy, which I have repeatedly said knew the price of everything and the value of nothing, with the mantra that private is best. Every single Government policy went to ensuring that private was best, not for care but for profit-making, and that is what happened.

I have asked a number of questions about how many private nursing homes have had to be taken over since 2020 alone. I have counted 11 in Wicklow, Kerry, Galway, Galway, Kerry, Cork and so on. The private nursing homes get into trouble and then the public system has to send in staff in Oughterard in Galway and in Galway city, into private, for-profit companies which are unaccountable. We send in staff, which is ironic because there is a nursing home in Carraroe, which I have mentioned many times, that cannot get staff, and it has 13 beds, or somewhere between ten and 15 beds at any given time, i gcroílár na Gaeltachta, and the HSE says that there are no staff. Yet, when these private companies get into trouble, we seem to be able to send in staff no problem to take them over. I am not sure if we have learned anything or what the cost has been of looking after the private companies that got into trouble. We are all in receipt of the public accounts, which I will not read out. Absolutely harrowing correspondence arises from Covid, including how many died in nursing homes and how they were treated. This is 2025 and people are still trying to get documents and appealing to us.

Let us look at the percentages. Not even 20% are in public ownership. It is much less, as we know from the Public Accounts Committee. That 20% or less includes publicly-owned nursing homes plus voluntary bodies. I think it is as low as 14% or 15%. I know Galway has an excellent reputation, with Merlin Park and the St. Francis home when it was there. I despair sometimes at the forcefulness of a lobby group and Governments that back up the market when all of the facts tell you otherwise, when we just pursue one avenue and keep reducing public ownership of nursing homes until it is nothing. If we are to learn anything from this, rather than listing the scandals, perhaps we could have a change in policy from the Government.

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