Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

The Minister of State outlined the position during her contribution.

The need for the fair deal arose on foot of the events at Leas Cross, of which the public first became aware in 2005. We have been waiting for almost four years for many of the new standards to be introduced, which is too long. As far as I recall, the report into Leas Cross was referred to the Garda. Will the Minister of State indicate the information communicated to her office by the Garda in respect of the matter? One of the failures at Leas Cross was not that the standards were bad — which they were — but that what happened was reported up the line and nobody took action. It was made known to people that there was a problem with Leas Cross but nobody did anything about it. That is the problem the Minister might encounter. She might put a fantastic set of standards in place but if nobody does anything when a breach is reported, as happened with Leas Cross, we are back to the same position. What was the response of the Garda to the Leas Cross report? If the Minister considered it necessary to go to the trouble to refer the report to the Garda Síochána, she should at least have received a report back from the Garda.

Senator O'Toole is correct that we must be careful with our approach to standards in nursing homes. It will be a minefield trying to draw up a set of standards and obliging nursing home personnel, public health doctors and nurses and officials from the Health Service Executive to trip over themselves filling out reports. The standards must be user-friendly and workable. They must not have nursing home staff tied down ticking boxes when they should be looking after patients. That is the greatest danger. When there is a failure to protect elderly patients in nursing homes, there is an urge to over-correct, with the result that people spend their time ticking boxes and not looking after patients.

Senator O'Toole asked what we can do about this. The first way of getting around the problem is to ensure that when one is made aware of a problem in a nursing home, one sends in the heavy guns. One must pursue the problem. If it is reported that a nursing home is not doing its job, the authority must do something about it. There is no point having staff in 2,000 nursing homes throughout the country filling forms, ticking boxes and getting completely stressed when the small minority of nursing homes which clearly will not live up to their commitments are not inspected and followed up when a report is made. Much of what the Government has said about this relates to the financial impact it will have. That is very important but it is not the real reason for doing this, which is to protect elderly people.

Let us remove the mystery about nursing homes. I listened to the contributions on this issue and some of the comments were a little patronising. When I carry out house calls to nursing homes I have no problem bringing my children with me. Elderly people love to see young children running around the nursing home and bringing variety to their lives. They would be delighted to see more people bring their children.

We should not paint these nursing homes as some type of elderly care institutional prisons. They are not. My next door neighbour, whose only fault appears to be that he votes for Fianna Fáil, calls to nursing homes every Sunday to sing to the residents. He is not a professional singer. He is retired but is lucky enough to be in good health. These are the things that make nursing home living a little more enjoyable. Nursing homes should not be described as if they are horrible institutions. In the vast majority of cases they are not.