asked the Minister for Health whether he will introduce legislation to provide for minimum standards of care and skill in, and the compulsory inspection and registration of nursing homes.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Inspection and Registration of Nursing Homes.
3.
Mr. Ryan
The initial difficulty in the consideration of this matter is to decide what is a nursing home. It would obviously be unnecessary and undesirable to include in the scope of any legislation a household into which an aged and ailing relative is taken, mainly for charity even if some payment towards expenses is made by the patient, or a household in which, for instance, a person had lived as a boarder, for many years perhaps, if the members of the household continued to care for that person after he or she had become ill.
Apart from the foregoing, it would not be possible to provide in legislation for minimum standards of care and skill. The standard of care and skill needed would vary enormously according to the condition of the patient or patients.
This question has been considered on a number of occasions, particularly in 1933, 1934, 1945 and 1946 and again more recently, and in every case the conclusion was that it would be impossible to frame legislation which would deal effectively with this problem while at the same time ensuring that charitable persons such as I have mentioned who are prepared to provide loving care for relatives and friends would not be subjected unduly to regimentation and regulation.
Are we to understand from this account of the failure of classification that the Minister for Health is in the same difficulty with regard to nursing homes as he is with regard to sausages?
He is not. Unlike the Deputy, he can distinguish one from the other.