Richard Boyd Barrett criticises nursing-home closures on Merriam Road

On one level the programme for government had everything in it, it was motherhood and apple pie, but some of us were critical that when you actually looked at the detail, it was vague and aspirational and didn't make tangible commitments in the key areas where people demanded change in the election. So it's really on that my question is focused. I mean, if you take the age-friendly Ireland section, sounds great, you know, at an age-friendly Ireland section, it's aspirational, you know, broadly nice, but totally aspirational. And then you look at what's actually happening. We had a disaster in our nursing homes in the context of COVID-19, you know, huge number of infections and fatalities because our nursing home care in this country is completely dysfunctional, completely dysfunctional. HICWA's report finds more than 50% of nursing homes were below standard in the report. You look at the situation in Merriam Road, and I particularly want to just shout out for the families and workers in two nursing homes, two nursing homes on the Merriam Road, on land owned or directly owned by the Sisters of Charity, both closing down at the moment, right? Because a religious organisation essentially would appear, decides the land on Merriam Road is very valuable to them. They probably want to flog it to developers. So they just unilaterally shut down the Caritas, end the lease for the Caritas nursing home and shut down St. Mary's, leaving the elderly and their families of those people in there high and dry and the workers high and dry. Now this, by the way, is in nursing homes where there wasn't COVID cases. So these were the good ones, but it's indicative of the dysfunctionality of the area because the Sisters of Charity are deciding the future, in this case, the end of nursing home care provision. And what are we doing about it? What are you doing about it? What tangibly are we going to do in the aftermath of COVID to make sure we are in charge of ensuring that we have the capacity in nursing home care that we need, that we are genuinely in control of it, that it has the resources that it needs, that the workers and the residents of nursing homes are properly protected? And maybe specifically, what is your government going to do about the scandal that's unfolding on Merriam Road? That's just one instance. One could say the same thing about the urgency in which people, in fact, the specific way in which the programme said it would protect tenants during COVID-19. And now it's absolutely unclear, are many tenants going to be evicted on the 1st of August when the temporary ban ends? So where is the tangible action on the things people ask for? Deputy Boyd Barrett's point in terms of, there's two dimensions. Look, our system has evolved. You mentioned yourself that those particular nursing homes were COVID-free. So we need to put on the record that quite a lot of nursing homes in Ireland did well in preventing COVID from spreading within their particular homes. But I do take your point that in terms of the initial response, all the emphasis was on the acute services for understandable reasons in terms of protecting ICU and so on. And there was a very significant spread of the virus within nursing homes, which caused loss of life. And now that has happened in other societies, the elderly are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. There's been a lot of support since though, to be fair, over the last number of months, put behind nursing homes in terms of PPE, in terms of engagement with the HSC and clinical oversight. And that's important. The testing has been really systemic now, and the HSC have organised a series now to do testing of nursing homes and staff in nursing homes on a regular systemic basis, which is important. I would favour the development of home-based care as a potential, you will always have a need for nursing home care, but we need to significantly resource home-based care as well, and to enable people to avail a fair deal in the context of home-based care. And I'll follow up and see what the exact situation will come back to you in St. Mary's and Caritas. Deputy Boyd-Barrick. Yeah, I think my point, Taoiseach, that, you know, arises from the experience of what happened to COVID-19 in the nursing home sector, and with the Caritas St Mary situation, is that we have a completely fragmented nursing home care sector. some of it's good some of it's not so good but we're in control of hardly any of it so the nuns in this case who seem to have turned into property magnets from what I can see and they seem to have lost any interest in the workers that worked for them or the residents in the nursing homes they just say we're closing it down because this is valuable land and we can flog it and it's allowed I mean this is part of or should be part of a national health service cradle to the grave national health service and yet its fate is decided by the sisters of charity who've just become big business and see property value as more important than nursing home care which is what was being delivered and good standard nursing home care but the workers are just gone and the residents and their families are left high and dry that is not acceptable and we need intervention and the state should just take that land and make sure that those jobs those nursing home places are protected and I think that is the lesson more broadly of the COVID crisis I mean Paul Reid said it at some of the briefings you were at when we asked him what's happening in the nursing homes he more or less said I don't know because we only control 20% of them thank you that's that's the problem they need to be part of a national health service so we know what's going on and we have the power to step in and ensure consistency and standards proper resourcing and oversight in terms of Deputy Boyd Barrett many state-owned health care centres had huge challenges as well in terms of COVID-19 some worse than nursing homes in the private sector that has to be said and some of the significant clusters happened in some elderly care settings within the state system itself and I agree with you that it is wrong to sell and to close down those nursing homes but the state as of now doesn't have either the constitutional or legal framework to stop people dealing or doing you know making decisions of that kind you know that you but yet you will say we should go in and stop it you know it's just not that's not that's easier said than obviously done but I think what we have to do is change the model of caring for our elderly that's what the program for government is committed to both in terms of home-based community-based interventions as well as well as there will always be a need for long-term nursing home care as well Thank you Taoiseach that concludes