Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2024-07-02
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

I raise with the Taoiseach an issue about which he has received correspondence from the alliance supporting nursing homes. The alliance wrote to the Taoiseach on 21 June 2024 regarding the national vetting service which, I believe, crosses Departments. I imagine that because it is dealt with under the National Vetting Bureau (Children and Vulnerable Persons) Act 2012, it has implications across Government with regard to the vetting of people who work with children and vulnerable persons.
The issue raised by the alliance with the Taoiseach in the letter - it has not received anything but the briefest of acknowledgements - is the fact that the smaller family-run and independent nursing homes it represents are required to vet their staff. Under the legislation, once an entity is deemed to be a "relevant organisation" which works in that area, it should receive access to a portal for the National Vetting Bureau where it vets its staff. It appears that this organisation, the alliance, is being denied that right because the sector is being monopolised by Nursing Homes Ireland, which represents bigger, sometimes international, operations in the nursing home sector that receive the vetting from the National Vetting Bureau for nothing, because it is done with public money. Nursing Homes Ireland is charging its members €10 per vetting of people and charging €25 to people who are not members of its organisation. In other words, this organisation is making money out of a publicly provided vetting service and is excluding others from being able to get the vetting which they should be able to get under the legislation. The alliance describes this as a scandal and as profiteering off the back of public money. It wants to know why this is happening because it say that it flies in the face of the legislation. I ask the Taoiseach to get back to the alliance.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-07-02/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2024-07-02