TWO DEPARTMENTS ARE at loggerheads after a review on the ban to stop nursing home operators from converting their facilities into emergency accommodation said a two-year obstruction should remain in place.
As the country’s housing crisis and a sectoral financial crisis in the nursing home industry continue, the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly and the Minister for Integration Roderick O’Gorman have been eyeing up facilities for older people which have shuttered their doors in recent years and months.
O’Gorman and his Department of Integration sees one possible solution to one of their crises, Donnelly and the Health Department a mounting crisis of their own.
The just-completed review saw the Department of Health decide to continue to block the conversion of vacant nursing homes into housing for asylum seekers for at least two years.
The decision comes on the back of Integration Minister Roderick O’Gorman being informed that there are seven such facilities across the country with the potential for more than 600 beds.
Social Democrats TD Róisín Shortall said she fears the Government has enabled a situation where nursing homes and the accommodation crisis are “pitted against each other”.
Deadlock has persisted around the use of vacant nursing homes to house international protection applicants and Ukrainians amid concerns it could lead to the closure of more nursing homes, owing to a financial crisis in parts of the sector.
The Department of Health said the time between a nursing home owner shuttering the doors and them converting to emergency accommodation should be at least two years. This would include a six-month notice period and an 18-month cooling off period.
Since last September, a nursing home that decided to cease operations is required to provide six months’ notice to the regulator at the Health and Information Quality Authority (HIQA).
A more complete, but temporary ban, on any conversion was implemented in November.
In the letter seen by The Journal, the ministers said that 18 nursing homes notified closure to HIQA last year.
The ministers told O’Gorman in this week’s letter that a freeze it implemented in November on converting nursing homes to accommodation was a “temporary” measure until it could settle on a “more long-term solution that recognises the challenges faced by both departments”.
They said a “more flexible approach” was needed which would provide an “appropriate closure process” for both residents and staff of a nursing home, while “preventing facilities from being empty”.
“Given these challenges, and the need to balance the needs of both Departments, we have taken the decision to implement a more flexible approach.
“We are therefore introducing a cooling-off period of 18 months after deregistration from HIQA’s register. We believe that approach taken provides for a sufficient amount of time.”
Options being pursued by the government to cope with Ireland’s accommodation crisis have hit delays in recent months, including a rapid-build modular housing programme and so-called ‘floatels’ which would see accommodation placed on barges in ports.
In correspondence seen by The Journal, Róisín Shortall provided Minister O’Gorman with information from an industry source claiming there are at least seven vacant nursing homes across the country which have capacity for over 600 beds.
The letter contended that there is no legal basis for homes that are vacant for at least six months to be prevented from being offered as accommodation – this cutoff is something that the Department of Integration implemented last year at the request of the Department of Health when there were fears that more nursing homes could close.
“The situation amounts to a perfect storm, for there is both a crisis in the business model for nursing homes and in relation to accommodation for migrants,” Shortall said.
“It shouldn’t be a competition between the two. In respect of private nursing homes, my preference would certainly be for publicly provided nursing homes but we do have a situation now where 80% of nursing homes are privately run. That’s not sustainable in the long term and needs to be addressed by government.”
Shortall added that the government’s response to the migrant accommodation crisis has been “entirely crisis driven” and has failed to make use of vacant properties elsewhere around the country.
“There isn’t sufficient staff working in the department in order to pursue options for accommodation, and there are quite a lot of vacant, publicly and privately owned buildings around the country and they should be pursued rather than the department accepting any offers that are being made,” Shortall said.
“There are a lot of religious houses vacant around the country, and there needs to be vigorous attempt made to bring some of those on the stream.”
When Shortall asked O’Gorman about the letter, he said he was waiting for the Department of Health to complete its review into the policy for conversion of nursing homes.
He has been contacted for comment about the health ministers’ decision.
There are major concerns for the future of the nursing home sector, with Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI) warning many homes have become “unviable”, having seen the sector lose 31 nursing homes and 915 beds in the last three years.
Its chief executive Tadgh Daly told The Journal that any nursing home owner deciding to switch its operations to provide accommodation is “a matter for themselves”, and he discouraged potential for owners being “demonised” for their decision.
However, he said NHI is working towards ensuring “there are no more closures” as it continues to campaign over the Fair Deal scheme.
Daly added: “We need to take a step back. The minister has failed to address the funding crisis for nursing homes and one of the consequences of that is you have nursing homes closing. There isn’t funding of nursing home care and there isn’t a sustainable, viable nursing home sector.”
Noting a report by PwC examining the sector this week, Daly said it is becoming “increasingly unfeasible” to operate a nursing home in Ireland, due to “rapidly rising costs and only very marginal increases” in income.
He said this was the “result of a Fair Deal Rate pricing mechanism no longer suitable for the current operating environment”.
Daly urged intervention by the government by improving funding to the National Treatment Purchase Fund, amid widespread frustrations with the NTPF’s approach to agreeing rates.
Speaking at Bloom today, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he doesn’t think there will be a surge in nursing home operators trying to leave the market and said the government is trying to make sure people can find care options away from nursing homes in the first place.
“We do have nursing homes that are closing and there’s lots of reasons for that. We also have more nursing homes that are opening as well and we need to make sure that we have a net increase in the number of nursing home beds, but also need to focus on home care as well,” the Fine Gael leader told reporters, adding that the government is doing everything it can to accommodate asylum seekers.
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