Nursing homes may be licensed

The Department of Health is considering putting in place a licensing regime for all nursing homes, Minister for Health Mary Harney…

The Department of Health is considering putting in place a licensing regime for all nursing homes, Minister for Health Mary Harney said yesterday.

She said under such a system nursing homes which did not meet required standards could have their licences withdrawn.

She made the announcement at the annual conference of the Irish Nursing Homes Organisation (INHO) in Dublin, where she also confirmed subvention payments for elderly people seeking nursing home care will be raised, perhaps even before next month's budget.

Ms Harney said the nursing home subvention rates had not changed since 1993 and, as a result, people with €8,000 in the bank or who had a house worth more than €95,000 did not qualify for enhanced subventions. "These are very unrealistic figures . . . I don't know of anywhere in the country where you would get a house for anything close to €95,000, and again I will be raising those to realistic figures," she said.

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Maximum subvention payments are currently €190 a week.

The Minister also indicated that a number of initiatives to support elderly people to remain in their own homes rather than having to go into care, would be announced in the budget. She said she wanted to "end the bias" in favour of nursing home care.

Some 20,000 people in the State were in public and private nursing home care, but 28 per cent of them could be living at home if they had adequate supports, she said.

Ms Harney said there was a need for substantial capital investment in public nursing homes in coming years. She had visited a number of such homes in recent weeks and had seen "conditions that are not appropriate in the year 2005". In one home there were more than 20 elderly people to a ward which didn't even leave room for a wardrobe between beds, she said.

On the subject of a licensing regime for all nursing homes, she said: "There are legal issues that haven't yet been resolved around that, but if it is possible to do it that's what we are examining."

She said the legislation providing for a more robust inspection process of all nursing homes, both public and private, was unlikely to be enacted before next summer.

Paul Costello, of the INHO, said public confidence in nursing homes had been "badly shaken" by the negative reporting on nursing homes this year. But he stressed there were also many good nursing homes. He said his organisation had been trying for some time to get Government agencies to "raise the bar in terms of proper standards and enforcement", but it had been a "slow and frustrating exercise".