Aontú Dublin Bay South Representative Mairéad Tóibín has called on the government to act swiftly to extend TAPS funding for Nursing Homes until the definitive end of the pandemic, given the devastation of nursing homes throughout Covid-19.

 

Mairead Tóibín, who herself works in a Nursing Home stated: “The COVID-19 Temporary Assistance Payment Scheme (TAPS) has been a crucial economic lifeline for many nursing homes, which have quite simply been devastated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The government pledged there would be no cliff edge for Covid-19 supports, but there is a very real risk of nursing homes – especially smaller nursing homes – being at a cliff edge if TAPS funding lapses today and the pandemic continues for a prolonged period of time.”

 

“56% of the people who died with Covid in the State contracted the virus either in hospital or in nursing homes. These two locations have been the epicentre of the Covid crisis. More than 2,000 of those who died from Covid-19 were nursing home residents. Our Vaccine strategy struggled significantly due to a lack of a centralised data base of patients and the government rolled a new vaccine administration infrastructure and ignored much of the pharmacies that normally administer flue jabs. The government has presided over a crisis in nursing homes on not one, but two, occasions during this pandemic to absolute devastation, but now proposes to let TAPS funding lapse at such a crucial point. The government cannot abandon its duty to nursing homes at this crucial and sensitive point.”