Nursing Homes
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-09
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Marie Sherlock (LAB), Dublin Central

The average waiting time in DTOC is 24.8 days across all acute hospitals and in the midlands and north-east Dublin it is more than 30 days. This is a huge cause for alarm in terms of risk to the patients themselves and their prospects of recovery but also the cost to the hospital. We know that nursing home demand is the biggest driver of this, with more than 1,500 people waiting for a nursing home space, but I have to ask about the urgency with regard to the Government's response. In 2022, ESRI research identified that we would need somewhere between 54,000 and 60,000 nursing home beds. We had 33,000 beds back in 2022. We have gone backwards and in 2025 we had fewer beds at 32,408. We are not even running to stand still. I am glad to hear a capacity expansion plan will be put in place but, like the acute hospital expansion plan, it has been sitting there for a number of years and I am not hearing urgency with regard to this problem.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-09