Nursing Homes
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-09
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Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire

Going back a couple of days, on 6 July there were 526 delayed transfers of care. Of these, 68 involved legal complexity, 35 involved basic housing needs, 90 involved very complex clinical needs, 61 were about access to rehab facilities of various kinds, home support packages were involved in 42 cases, residential care in 217 cases and non-compliance in 13 cases. It is not just about nursing home support; it is also about support at home. For example, it is important to mention the expansion of the enhanced community care teams, which are the multidisciplinary teams supporting earlier discharge from hospital closer to home. There is also extended service availability in the evenings and at weekends, including discharge planning, community supports and decision makers addressing avoidable non-clinical delays to discharge where it is possible.
I have mentioned the virtual wards. I do not suggest that everybody would move onto a virtual ward but there are people for whom it is clinically appropriate to do so. Crucially, the SAFER patient flow bundle and the plan for every patient are now in place across most sites, supported by seven-day and 14-day length-of-stay reviews.

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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