Urgent action needed to prevent closures of private nursing homes

Olivia Kelleher

Urgent action is required to prevent the closure of large numbers of private nursing homes this year, according to Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI) chief executive Tadhg Daly.

NHI said recently published figures reveal HSE nursing homes receive an average 69 per cent more (€744) per resident per week under the Fair Deal scheme compared to their private and voluntary counterparts.

Mr Daly told RTÉ radio's Morning Ireland that the funding crisis has led to the closure of over 20  nursing home over the last 15 months, adding he fears there will be further exits from the sector in the coming months.

"Our concern is that there is a lack of urgency around this, there is inaction by Government. We have seen in other sectors, not least the housing sector, that if you don’t address the matters in a timely fashion it will lead to further challenges down the line.

"The HSE have published the weekly per-resident fee for residents under the Fair Deal and Public Homes and the average has increased from €627 per resident per week to €744 per resident per week.

"There is a significant threat to sustainability of nursing home care, and these figures confirm that the gulf that is already there has increased further."

Investment

Mr Daly said NHI members have had to "invest significantly" over recent years to continue to meet the Health and Information Quality Authority's (Hiqa) standards and "do so willingly but need to be adequately resourced".

He called for the Government to increase the funding under the Fair Deal scheme to ensure sustainability and allow staff to be remunerated on par with their colleagues in the public system.

"We need the confidence from the point of view of the residents, staff and providers to be injected in to the sector quickly, because if we don’t, it is inevitable that we are going to see further closures of nursing homes," Mr Daly said.

Describing the current pricing system for the Fair Deal scheme as "not fit for purpose", he said NHI want to "work in collaboration with Government to fix this".

"Last year we published an open letter to Taoiseach in terms of the crisis for care. We also lodged a complaint to the European Commission in terms of illegal State aid.

"But our ambition is to work collaboratively with the Government, with the HSE and with all stakeholders to ensure that we have a sustainable, high quality residential care sector that meets the needs of residents, and also ensure we cannot remunerate staff appropriately."