Tuesday’s Top Stories: Small rural nursing homes closing; Dublin city back street closed because of crime

Care homes in rural Ireland becoming rarer as small private facilities shut

Older people living in rural Ireland will face a shortage of nursing home beds close to home as larger, new facilities open in counties with big populations and greater numbers of existing beds, new research has found.

A paper by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has found that almost one in five smaller private nursing homes closed over a two-year period with the country increasingly relying on large centres funded by international private equity firms.

Researchers warned regional inequalities were likely to increase further with planning data showing several other large facilities, all situated in counties with the highest per capita bed supply for long-term residential, are due to open.

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