Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal East, Labour)

Two weeks before the "RTÉ Investigates" programme, a man in his 80s came to my clinic. He makes a bare minimum of 14 trips a week to the nursing home in which his wife is living. He visits in the morning to make sure his wife's day can begin with care, dignity and love. It is not the nursing home's job to provide love but it is its job to provide care and dignity. He goes again at night to make sure her day ends with care and dignity. He visits a number of additional times during the week when his children cannot make the trip. He stopped short of saying there was abuse but what there is in that nursing home is neglect. There is neglect because there are not enough staff, and the staff are not there to provide the work that is needed to care for his wife. He is in his 80s; his wife is older, she is unwell and she is being let down by this system.

This system for older people and their care is almost completely broken. There are elements performing better than others. One element that is performing better and has done for the last number of years, though not perfectly, are our HSE-run and publicly owned and funded care homes. We need to be reinvesting in a public model of care. We need to be taking over private homes such as the 27 Emeis nursing homes that are performing so poorly.

What these private nursing home conglomerates will welcome is our money. They will welcome the Minister's money and the State's money but what they will not welcome is trade unions. They are not welcome. They will not be allowed into their facilities to organise their staff to ensure there are safe staffing levels, proper pay and proper terms and conditions. I thought Deputy Charles Ward's contribution as a former worker in this sector was really interesting. He highlighted the tensions between private and public staffing and how the HSE, when it finds out that a staff member is performing well and has a good reputation in a private nursing home, will go in and hire them. More often than not, that worker, for understandable reasons such as pay, pension and standards of care, will move to the HSE. Deputy Ward mentioned his own case, where he would not be moved because he cared for and was committed to his residents.

This model is broken. I reject the fact that the Minister felt she needed to put a countermotion down in order to set out a charter by which she would measure her own progress. As Minister, she has many opportunities to do this. She should be supporting our motion and what Deputies Sherlock and Wall, on behalf of the Labour Party, have put forward here today. We will continue on this. It may not be on the front pages of the newspapers every day anymore but it will be front and centre of what the Labour Party will be pursuing in the health and care agenda for the lifetime of this Dáil and beyond.

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