Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)

I thank all those who spoke in support of our Labour motion on nursing homes and care. I thank in particular my colleagues Deputies Marie Sherlock and Mark Wall for leading on this motion. We in the Labour Party have put this forward with one key purpose, namely, to ensure dignity for those of our citizens who are ageing. Everyone in Ireland should be supported to age with dignity. We have set out a series of constructive steps to achieve that dignity that we speak about. In particular, we speak about three things: we want to see a breaking of the hold of big business on the nursing home sector; we want to empower HIQA and ensure minimum standards of care are required in the sector; and we want to see the rapid passage of long-promised adult safeguarding legislation.

Of course, home care should be the gold standard. Everyone wants to be supported in his or her home. However, nursing homes will always be needed when a higher level of care is required. Sadly, we know from Aoife Hegarty and her excellent team in RTÉ that abuse and neglect across nursing homes is all too often the case for our older citizens. This is not limited to Emeis nursing homes, albeit we saw some egregious examples of abuse and neglect. In our motion, we call for these nursing homes to be taken over by the State. We stand by that.

According to those who work in private nursing homes, we see denials of dignity every day. One care worker spoke to me about the cheapest of facilities and materials, the limits on numbers of staff and no human touch in the care provided. What is the root cause of this? It is due to the for-profit motive that unfortunately lies at the base of our nursing home sector.

Our motion seeks to tackle what is a systemic ageism that has allowed this creeping privatisation, this commodification of care. That has resulted in the diminution of standards and in the sort of neglect that we have seen all too often. We need to ensure that the constructive steps we have outlined are now taken by the Government with urgency so that we can see a return to the sort of dignity that our older citizens expect and need. We must ensure older persons have a voice in the process. That is why we have placed an emphasis on the need for the Government to take the steps that Safeguarding Ireland and the Law Reform Commission have set out so clearly. I welcome the Minister's indication that the Government will bring forward the safeguarding legislation before the August break. I very much hope she will. We will certainly welcome and support that if it is done. This is about ensuring a reset of our care model, ensuring that we move from commodification to compassion and from the disrespect we are currently seeing across the system to a model where the dignity of our older citizens is paramount and nobody has to suffer the awful indignities that we saw far too many people suffering in those nursing homes that were under the spotlight in the RTÉ programme.

We will work with the Minister on this. We are very disappointed at the amendment. We believe the Minister could have supported our motion, which is a constructive one. We think the amendment does nothing to reassure older people and their families that this Government is going to tackle the scandal in nursing homes with the urgency it requires. The amendment is derisory and we ask the Minister to withdraw it and enable us to unite across this House in the support of our older persons and dignity in older age.

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