Nursing home support scheme needs €145m from Budget 2025, says NHI boss
Addressing Annual The Of Mary Homes 1909 State Ireland Kilkenny Conference For Minister In People Older Nursing Butler
The Budget needs to allocate €145m to Fair Deal funding for private and voluntary nursing homes, Nursing Homes Ireland CEO Tadhg Daly said.
Fair Deal funding, the nursing home support scheme, is allocated per resident across all nursing homes. “The issue is the pricing mechanism,” he said. “The pricing mechanism is broken effectively, it is not reflective of the true cost of care.”
At the NHI annual conference in Kilkenny, Mr Daly said recent increases have to be seen against “incessant inflation” and coming changes to the minimum wage among other issues.
NHI have costed the impact of those changes alone at €100m and submitted this to Government, he said. “Last year €45m was added in the Nursing Home Support Scheme (NHSS) budget, but we are talking a ball-park €145m would be required in Budget25, at a minimum,” he said.
“That is €145m for the private and voluntary homes.”
He warned rural areas could see more closures with 77 homes closed since 2018.
In Kerry the HSE has this week taken charge of a private nursing home, part of the Aperee Living chain.
Minister of State for Older People Mary Butler addressed the conference and afterwards told reporters: “I do accept that we have lost nursing homes, especially small, community-run, family-run nursing homes in rural areas that have found it challenging — especially those that might have under 40 beds.”
However, she said new operators are entering the market. “We have seen a net gain of beds over the last three years, of approximately 900 to 1,000 beds,” she said.
“But I suppose where the challenges are — they might not be in the regions where you want them, they might not be in rural counties or rural communities. So whereas we have a small amount of capacity, it might not be in your preferred location.”
She also said in the last year regulators Hiqa (Health Information and Quality Authority) had to remove eight nursing homes from the register. “(This was) because they felt that the care being provided there was not at a minimum standard,” she said.
The Fair Deal budget this year was €1.5bn, she said, and supports 22,300 residents. “I will of course be looking into Budget 2025 to get more money to continue to stabilise the nursing home sector,” she said.
Despite this pledge, she cautioned: “At the same time, I have to be realistic, we have less people in nursing homes today than we had in 2019, about 400 less.”