The Deputy has got in twice.

More than 2,000 people who were residents of nursing homes died during Covid-19. Rightly and properly, the Government funded supports for nursing homes to the tune of, as of December 2022, €145 million. There are problems, however, regarding the funding of some of those nursing homes. An example on the HIQA website is Ratoath Manor nursing home, which received more than €405,000 in temporary assistance payment scheme, TAPS, supports. Yet it is quite clear that the HIQA inspectors are not assured that this is a well governed nursing home. There was extensive non-compliance over three consecutive inspections from September 2021 to March 2022. Some of those assessments were rated red or high risk. Repeated non-compliance was found in infection control, medicine and pharmaceutical services, the rights of residents, governance etc. This case demands that a forensic audit be undertaken of this entire €145 million and, specifically, regarding this nursing home.

I take the point made by the Deputy. We must treat the two issues in parallel. Regardless of the efforts made, or the success or failure in any specific nursing home, we must still ensure that State funding is going to these homes to protect the residents. In parallel to this, we must take the patient safety and regulatory issues very seriously. To that effect, just last night, the Patient Safety (Notifiable Incidents and Open Disclosure) Bill 2019 finished its passage through the Houses. It is going to the President for his signature now. One of the critical elements of that legislation, of which I know the Deputy was supportive, is that it extends HIQA's powers to allow it to investigate individual patient safety issues, instead of the power it did have, which was a general investigative one, which had not been satisfactory.