, CEO of Silverstream – who owns and manages 11 private nursing homes – Tom Finn said: “The Fair Deal is in around 12 or 13 years now and I think in the beginning it was very much fit for purpose.”“As people grow older and the acuity or the dependency of residents gets higher, the costs get higher,” he said.Mr Finn said the main issue faced by private nursing homes is that they do not receive the same increase in funding as the HSE does.
“This morning the HSE acknowledged that the cost of running those beds is higher than the private ones. “The [HSE] staffing ratios are higher, benefits are better and that's the reason we lose 100% of our nurses to the public system.”Mr Finn said the issue of losing staff to the public system is not down to a wage difference.“The carers are definitely paid higher in the public system than they are in the private system, but it's not sustainable.”“They come from abroad, we train them and then they immediately move into the public sector,” he said.