Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

I join with other Members in expressing my disgust and revulsion at what was exposed on “RTÉ Investigates”. When we see scenes like that on television, we think of our own relatives and friends who spend time in nursing homes. It makes every family wonder about the care they are receiving. Of course, it has to be said that what we saw results in a stain on all nursing homes across the country. However, as we know, the vast majority provide excellent care and the staff and management working in them do their level best to provide humane and compassionate care for their residents. Unfortunately, what we saw on our television screens did not live up to that in any shape or form. What we saw was very undignified and inhumane treatment of people in their most vulnerable state in their senior years, when they should have been receiving compassionate, caring and dignified care from those charged with the responsibility to provide care.

HIQA has a lot of questions to answer in this regard. HIQA is an organisation with good resources and powers but, unfortunately, what we saw on RTÉ shows that the regulatory system is not working, or not to the extent that it should. Given the tactics that RTÉ used in exposing this, HIQA needs to look at those tactics in order to get under the bonnet of what is happening in our nursing homes so it can expose the true result of what is happening. It took RTÉ to do this. What it did was outstanding work and it really exposed what we saw in regard to these nursing homes. I stress that, in my opinion, this is a minority across the country. At the same time, it should not be happening in any nursing home.

I have seen commentary regarding the need for the Government to step up resources in public and community nursing homes, and I fully support that. However, that is not the solution to this problem. There will always be private nursing homes. What we have to put in place is a good, robust regulatory system so all families across the country have confidence in the care that is provided for their senior family members. That is what is important. I hope that as a result of the good work that RTÉ did, this will be the ultimate outcome.

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