Nursing Home Charges and Disability Allowance Payments: Statements Dail Éireann — 2023-02-09 ============================================================ Bríd Smith (PBP), Dublin South-Central I cannot help but say that sometimes I have to pinch myself and ask if I am in a Parliament where there are Government and Opposition benches, because I have listened to have a dozen or so speeches from Government party Deputies in both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael lashing out of it the Minister for Health and previous Ministers and governments for this scandal. They are still, however, members of the parties responsible for it. They are still in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, even though they are condemning the behaviour of Ministers and of previous parties for upholding what was done to people in nursing homes and people with disabilities or in long-term care. It is a scandal and will be remembered by the population. I suspect the reason these Deputies are so strong in their condemnation is because they understand that the older persons are the ones who vote. The grey vote is important to them and they do not want to lose it in their constituencies. It is a hypocrisy and the least they could do is to have a backbenchers’ revolt against the report of the Attorney General----- --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-02-09/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:33+00:00 Sitting date: 2023-02-09