Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats)

Trust in nursing homes has been lost. With everything that has come to light in recent months, the one overwhelming response, which really concerns me deeply, is that people are now afraid of nursing homes, or perhaps more afraid, because revelations like these have been coming out for decades. Old age should come with a security and a certainty that a person's needs are met, they are safe and they treated with dignity. It is the duty of policymakers to not only address the issues raised by the recent abuses which have come to light, but also to rebuild this broken trust. We need a system that is both safe and trusted. Without both, we are not delivering that vital security to people and their families.

Unfortunately, as we have heard from many today, this is the natural product of privatisation of care. When care work is conducted on a for-profit basis, we encourage the work to be done to as close to the bare minimum of standards as possible. I have worked in both the private and public sectors - not in the care sector - but it is a simple fact that in a for-profit environment, the bottom line is it. Everything that is done in such an environment is for profit; it has to be because that is what the organisation is set up for. The public sector is a very different environment, where there is either a mandate or a job to do that is not driven by money. We have to get our heads around that when we are thinking about the provision of care in this State.

People who work in nursing homes around the country tell us about the chronic short staffing, the lack of oversight and the lack of resourcing. These conditions are a recipe for disaster for people living in nursing homes who are then vulnerable to that poor treatment. We did not need and RTÉ programme to tell us this. Any healthcare assistant around the country could do exactly that.

As this motion points out, 80% of nursing homes in the State are now in private hands. Without addressing the failure of the State to provide nursing home care, to provide for safe staffing levels and to take responsibility for the care of older people, we will not see the change that we need.

I have mentioned one piece of legislation in previous debates and I want to raise it again. The Inspection of Places of Detention Bill has been delayed multiple times. It provides for what many people have talked about here today, namely the unannounced visits. The Bill has the remit and jurisdiction to potentially deal with nursing homes. I encourage the Government to look at that as something that could bolster the remit of HIQA and give it the powers it needs.

We will be supporting this motion. I commend the work of the Labour Party on bringing it forward. As with other Deputies, I share a real rejection of what the Government has put forward as a countermotion, because it simply fails to recognise the urgency and the importance of this issue.

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