3770. Deputy Barry Heneghan asked the Minister for Health if the national treatment purchase scheme (NTPF) engaged individually or collectively with a nursing home group (details supplied) during 2024; the basis on which they calculated the funds that could be paid to the homes through the HSE administered nursing home support scheme (NHSS); and if the NTPF, at any stage in the negotiation process, examined the books of the group or of their individual nursing homes. [57631/26]

The National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) are the body designated, under Section 40 of the Nursing Homes Support Scheme Act 2009, to negotiate with persons carrying on the business of a HIQA registered nursing home, for the purposes of reaching an agreement on the maximum prices to be charged for nursing home care. The NTPF shall only agree prices with nursing homes on an individual basis where it considers that those prices deliver value for money to the Irish State.

In negotiating prices, the NTPF shall have regard to the following considerations (which are in no particular order of priority):

i) costs reasonably and prudently incurred by the nursing home and evidence of value for money

ii) price(s) previously charged

iii) the local market price

iv) budgetary constraints and the obligation of the State to use available resources in the most beneficial, effective and efficient manner to improve, promote and protect the health and welfare of the public

The NTPF carry out this role independently under the Nursing Homes Support Scheme Act 2009. The NTPF has statutory independence, and there is no role for Ministers or the Department of Health in these negotiations which are conducted and agreed between individual nursing home providers and the NTPF.

The NTPF is empowered by Article 4(3) of the National Treatment Purchase Fund Board (Establishment) Order 2004, as amended (the “Order”), to ‘examine the records and accounts of an approved nursing home'.