Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)

We need a fair deal for care. This means ending the privatisation of nursing home care and giving older people the choice to age in their own homes and communities, with a statutory right to home care. This right to home care has long been promised by successive Governments since 2017, but we have yet to see any real progress on this. Instead, the only option that older people and their families are faced with is nursing home care. The average length of stay in a nursing home is around three years. This reflects the level of decline that many older people experience due to privatisation, where shareholders are more concerned with profits than the care and wellbeing of older people. We have seen a small number of multinational corporations and foreign investment funds take a stranglehold on the nursing home sector over the last 20 years. Some 30% of nursing homes were privately owned. That has risen to nearly 80%.

Emeis Ireland is one of the largest operators in this country, with 25 nursing homes, six of which are in my own county, Kildare. The "RTÉ Investigates" programme shone a light on the distressing and unacceptable practices of Emeis Ireland. Our motion seeks to address the failures of big business to implement effective measures to provide quality care and basic compassion to older people. As a society, we must accept that the privatisation of care cannot work. It is already a failed model. We need a radical reform of the nursing home sector, with minimum staffing levels, giving stronger enforcement powers to HIQA, and delivering adult safeguarding legislation.

This motion is the start of a national movement where we want to end corporate care and move towards care in the community. We have an ageing population and the demands on healthcare and services will only increase. We must therefore look at our changing demographics and expand the continuation of care for older people through developing infrastructure, implementing a statutory home care scheme and increasing staff to support care in the community and in the home. I note the Minister of State's bona fides from his contributions in this House and the Seanad and that he is determined to facilitate people to "live in their own homes".

I have dealt with a number of cases over the last couple of weeks and a huge issue at the moment is where people are waiting for housing adaptation grants from local authorities, yet they cannot move into their homes because those housing adaptation grants have not been sanctioned. Surely an intervention from the Minister of State would allow those people to go back to live in their own homes and allow that bed to be freed up for somebody else. I will allow my colleagues to come in. I hope the Minister of State will listen to this motion today because unfortunately what we have seen in the Government's amendment to the motion is not a Government listening or caring, but a Government promoting privatisation.

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