Nursing homes and their clients have been through the mill in the past two years. They have overcome the kind of challenges we could not even fathom until we had to face them. Today, they are facing new challenges in the context of keeping their doors open, retaining talent and delivering top-class services, all while facing skyrocketing energy bills. The gas bill of a nursing home in my constituency tripled in three months. It has been told to expect further hikes. For it and many other facilities, this is not sustainable. While some households may turn down radiators during summer, that is not an option for nursing homes because they have to maintain HIQA standards. The National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, must put forward a meaningful package to alleviate the inflationary pressures that are crippling many nursing homes. I ask the Minister to request that the NTPF engage with nursing homes' representative body, Nursing Homes Ireland.

I agree that nursing homes provide a critically important service. My understanding is that, to date, four expert panel progress reports have been published on the issue of how we advance and improve them. The key areas of progress include the provision of State supports to nursing homes. More than €22 million was provided in budget 2022 for the implementation and mainstreaming of a range of recommendations in the expert panel report, including the establishment of permanent community support teams, the development of permanent community support teams, the development and piloting of clinical governance for nursing homes and the development of a safe staffing framework for the sector. It is important that we learn from Covid. Significant supports were put in place but there was real concern during Covid, especially in the early stages, in respect of how nursing homes operated. I refer the Deputy to that report and to the implementation timelines. That is critical in the context of trying to address some of those concerns.