I raise with the Tánaiste the future of the Dean Maxwell nursing home in Roscrea. I do so in the context of the current review of the national development plan. Community groups in Roscrea have combined to make an application for funding to build a new Dean Maxwell care home and community hub. This is an essential infrastructural development, which would deliver a comprehensive range of services for those in need of elderly care in Roscrea and district.

For more than 50 years, north Tipperary had three centres of elderly care - Thurles, Nenagh and Roscrea. When the last health plan was formulated the HSE, with political encouragement, downgraded Roscrea. I raised this matter with the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health a few months ago. The Minister for Health, at my request, organised a meeting with senior executives in the HSE. At this meeting, the HSE outlined its true intentions. It is the policy and intention of the HSE to move long-stay beds out of the Dean Maxwell unit to Nenagh. The Dean Maxwell unit would then become a short-stay unit with no meaningful future. Through this policy the Dean Maxwell unit is effectively consigned to closure by stealth. This would have disastrous consequences in terms of the delivery of elderly care for the citizens in Roscrea. We cannot allow the services in Roscrea be sacrificed. This unforgivable injustice must be addressed. I ask the Tánaiste for the timescale involved in the process for appraisal, evaluation and assessment of applications under the plan.

I thank Deputy Lowry for raising this important issue. Senator Ahearn and Deputy Cahill have been in touch with my office about it also. The Dean Maxwell Community Nursing Unit needs to be upgraded and modernised to meet Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, standards. I have been informed that it has been asked to make a submission to the review of the national development plan and that it has done exactly that. That review is under way. I do not have an exact timeline but we would expect to have the review completed within a couple of months. I want to acknowledge the importance of having such a unit in Roscrea. I will certainly make the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, aware that it was raised by the Deputy again today.