Mattie McGrath warns small nursing homes are under siege

very timely and very sensitive motion. The programme in RTE shocked everybody, but many people knew the whole change and systematic change on the nursing care and the measures of care in our nursing homes. I salute the many, many hundreds, but I'm talking about Tipperary, many small nursing homes and some quite big, St. Matthews and Bramley Lodge and Castle and many, many others I could name right throughout the county who do an excellent job, but they're under fierce pressure and there's a discrimination against them because the HSE-owned ones have a way bigger subvention than the private ones, small private ones I'm talking about. We've commodified health care, we've commodified nursing care and I've seen it with my eyes in front of me. We're waiting for a 60-bed nursing unit of HSE-1 in Castle at her lady's hospital in Castle, sorry, at St. Patrick's hospital in Castle. We were only told in a meeting about a year and a half ago from Deputy Brown and myself that the site wasn't suitable. I don't know how it took so long to come up with that idea. Now we're looking for a site, so a 60-bed unit, look at the pressure that would take off nursing home, it would take off people that need nursing care. And as I said, I want to salute the nurses, the attendants, the management of the community and small and family-run nursing homes and some of the bigger ones as well. The standard of care I see them, I visit them quite often, is very good. And where there is wrongdoing or where there is abuse taking place, I believe that not only the management, but the persons perpetrating death as in this place should be prosecuted. This is elder abuse of the worst kind. But just to go back to the situation, we in Tipperary used to have Tipperary District Hospital and we had St. Bridget's in Carrick up to two years ago and the ceremony closed, taken over for COVID, Maria, and then closed down. And we had 15 beds there and we had three lovely hospice suites. And it was a very functioning and practical place and it should be reopened. It must be reopened for the whole south-east of Tipperary and indeed East Waterford and, of course, South Kinney, all using that. And excellent management and staff there. We have St. Theresa's in Tlauheen. I couldn't say enough about it. A district hospital as it was, it has been expanded and upgraded. Two fabulous hospice suites there where many people go, unfortunately, into flight, but they have a dignity and the families are looked after as well. So it's under the maitre and Anne Walsh there now, the nursing manager, and indeed the staff, excellent staff. I have many friends and relations who have, including my own mother, who died there and got the best of care and the best of treatment. That's the model that has worked. Not the model of allowing big and bigger and bigger condomers to expand and expand and gobble up the older ones. But Hickway, I have a lot to blame for here as well. Because I remember a lovely nursing home in Carrick and Shure when I came in here first in 07, 08, 09, and a flat building which was no steps and the owner-manager there was doing her best. But Hickway were down on like a tonne of bricks. There was another new nursing home built in the same town and there were never visitors or whatever. So Hickway are saying now, I've heard in this morning reports that they don't have the powers to deal with the bigger companies and the bigger condomers. They must do. It's the same care. It's people's care needs to be looked after. So what did they do to that woman? They kept coming along to her and criticising this and that and the other and then they started restricting her number of beds. They closed beds, two, and they made two another month after. Eventually closed six of them. So when she needed to get a loan from the bank to upgrade the nursing home to what they wanted, the books didn't add up because of the closures. They closed them by stealth. Forced them to close. And one day they came, lo and behold, two inspectors and they did that tour and were met and had their dinner to taste the food and they said the food was quite bland. I don't know what they expected. It wasn't the rest of the hotel they were going to some place, but the food was quite bland. The food was excellent. But that nursing home was no longer in business. Unceremoniously closed down by Hickway, which was an utter disgrace and I raised it in this house at the time. So now Hickway seems not to be able to touch these big sickle cows and they have the power to do with the home. So if they have the power to do with the small nursing home, why shouldn't they have the same power? We're talking about human beings. We're talking about individuals that are at home and are not able to be at home and they would prefer to be at home and they need the care. And we're all facing that. I remember when my kids were small buying a sticker for the rear window sticker, be nice to your children, they pick your nursing homes. And that's a sticker that was there for many people. So unfortunately, there's not much choice there nowadays, but we're all in that, well, I'm freaking myself, I mean, heading to that area in life. And it's so sad that we've commodified this to such an extent and that we have many of the commodities that people, people we're talking about, human beings, our parents and grandparents and our friends and neighbours and they deserve respect and if they were unfit for purpose, they should be disbanded. But above all, they should be made account for themselves as to why they can close small nursing homes and then allow the consumers to do what they like. Thank you very much.