Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The reason I am raising this issue is that Nursing Homes Ireland and some of the other organisations constantly contact me about situations where they go to the Department of Health and the standard response is that it must go and talk to the HSE. Likewise, when they go to the HSE, the response is that it must go and talk to the Department. Their view is that even if such a forum was to meet only once every six months, all of the stakeholders would sit down to talk about the issues and how they could be addressed before they became a real problem. It is in that context that they have raised the issue. They are being told that one party has to consult the other. As a result, they are finding that they have to go back and forth. They state a meeting on a biannual basis would help in dealing with a lot of the issues that arise.