Campaign for better funding for nursing homes launched nationwide

By Cate McCurry, PA

A campaign for better funding to support private and voluntary nursing homes has been launched nationwide.

The billboard campaign got under way outside Leinster House in Dublin as well as in Wicklow and Cork.

Tadhg Daly, chief executive of Nursing Homes Ireland, said the national representative body wanted to raise awareness around the challenges of the Fair Deal scheme.

Under the scheme, the State provides funding to approved private nursing homes to cover part of the costs of providing care to long-term residents.

Mr Daly said, however, that a review of the scheme needs to be published.

He said that the scheme is unfair to many families.

“Our campaign is, ‘It’s Not Fair, Save Our Nursing Homes’, and we need to fix the fair deal,” he added.

“We are seeing an aging population and that’s something we should be celebrating and planning for.

“Across the country, a large number of nursing homes have closed in the last number of years, and many more are under threat unless we address the funding crisis within Fair Deal.”

Mr Daly said he wants it to become an issue during for political parties during an upcoming election campaign.

He added: “We want the party manifestos to include references to address the challenges of the residential care requirements of our aging population, and for it to make it into the programme for government.

“The Fair Deal review has been going on now nearly seven years, and it hasn’t been finalised.

“The review needs to be published and implemented in full so that we can secure the nursing home care for the current generation of older people, but also for future generations of our older population.”