Harney aware of financial burden nursing homes putting on families

MINISTER FOR Health Mary Harney has acknowledged the "considerable financial burden" nursing home costs are placing on many families, as new figures show the average weekly cost of long-stay private care rose to €778 last year.

Nursing home inflation was 12 per cent last year, according to a survey of its members by Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI), and costs are likely to rise even faster as private facilities make improvements to meet new State inspection requirements.

The average figure masks huge variations in the cost of private nursing home care across the State and between individual nursing homes. Residents of homes around Dublin are paying up to €1,330 per week for a single en suite room with specialist care, while the cheapest rooms in the northwestern region cost €485 per week.

With the survey showing the east of the country is relatively undersupplied with private long-stay beds, the Minister suggested that some homes were "in the wrong place".

"There will come a day if we don't address it when it will be impossible to get a nursing home facility in this city," she told the launch of the NHI survey in Dublin yesterday. The high cost of development land made the acquisition of sites extraordinarily expensive, she said, and no tax incentives could make up for this. Ms Harney said she would be discussing possible solutions to the problem with the Minister for the Environment.

Legislation providing for the introduction of a "fair deal" scheme, which will fund nursing home care from people's estates, will come before Cabinet in the next few weeks, she added, and should be enacted by the end of the summer. The drafting of the legislation had proven "incredibly complex" in legal terms.

The NHI survey shows that beds in nursing homes in the northern, east coast and southwestern areas cost on average about 50 per cent more than the cheapest area, the northwest.

The number of patients who receive State help to cover the costs of staying in a private home is increasing. Last year HSE subventions accounted for almost half the income of private homes, up from one-third the previous year.

NHI says an additional 1,000 new private beds were provided last year as new homes opened, and about 500 extra beds were created as existing homes extended. However, 531 beds were lost because of home closures. There are now 18,800 private beds in the country, about twice the number of public beds.

The number of private beds has doubled in a decade, since a series of tax allowances were introduced to boost the sector. Staff costs are rising rapidly; by an average of 21 per cent nationally, and by up to 35 per cent in the east coast, northern, southwestern and midlands areas.

NHI chief executive Tadhg Daly said private homes were taking the pressure off acute hospitals by providing care for residents with complex medical needs. One-third of residents of private homes have dementia and half are high-dependency.

Occupancy rates nationally exceed 91 per cent. On average, there is one private bed for every 25 over-65s, but this figure rises to one for 30 in the east and drops to one in 20 in the west. Just over half the nurses employed in private homes are Irish; most of the remainder come from outside the EU. Average pay ranges from €9.80 an hour for domestic staff to €17.45 for nurses.