Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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1019. To ask the Minister for Health when the report on the difference in funding between private and public nursing homes due to be published in 2019 will be published; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21177/20]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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A Value for Money (VFM) Review on Nursing Home Care Costs is being undertaken by my Department. The purpose of the VFM Review is to identify, quantify and analyse the reasons for any cost differential between public and private nursing homes and, following analysis, to make recommendations for improving the value for money obtained by the Health sector.

It was anticipated that this Review would be completed by end December 2019. However, due to a lack of comparable private sector data, the Chair decided to pause the Review until data collection issues could be overcome. Following a meeting between the Chair, members of the Review Team and Nursing Homes Ireland in March 2020, it was agreed that Nursing Homes Ireland would supply data to address the gaps in the Review. In the days following this meeting, the Department had to pause all non-essential work, including the VFM Review, in order to focus resources on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In recent weeks work on the Review has restarted. The final draft of the Review is expected to be presented to the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES) shortly for a robust assessment of data and methodology. Following the IGEES assessment the Final Report will be presented to the Steering Committee for agreement. Once the Steering Committee signs off on the Review, the Report will be laid before the Oireachtas in line with the procedures set out in the Public Spending Code.