Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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542. To ask the Minister for Health if he will provide, in tabular form, by county, the 26 public nursing homes at risk of being non-compliant with Health Information and Quality Authority standards on accommodation. [23016/15]

Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has indicated that a number of public units do not fully meet the standards one would expect to find in a modern nursing home. This is not surprising given the age and structure of many of our public nursing homes. Compliance issues are in the main related to physical infrastructure and to issues such as personal space and privacy and access to toilet facilities. It is important to stress that the care provided to residents of these facilities is of a generally high standard.

Discussions are ongoing between the Health Service Executive (HSE) and HIQA in this context. Addressing these issues will require prioritisation across facilities within the overall resources that can be made available and it would not be helpful to that exercise to highlight individual units where issues arise.

It is also important to point out that the Department of Health is not and cannot be involved in the dialogue between HIQA and the HSE on the status of individual units.