THE Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) will be given powers to investigate serious patient safety incidents in public nursing homes under plans going to Cabinet this week.

Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill and Junior Minister with Responsibility for Older People, Kieran O’Donnell will bring forward the proposals, seeking government approval to amend the Patient Safety Act 2023 to cover public nursing homes under existing powers exercised by Hiqa, the Sunday Independent yesterday reported.

In 2024, the body was given further investigative powers that allow it to carry out or commission an independent review of a defined type of serious patient safety incident, where some or all of the care of a patient was carried out in a nursing home. Those powers will now be extended to public nursing homes.

It comes in the wake of an RTÉ Investigates programme that scrutinised standards of care in several residential facilities owned by Ireland’s leading provider of private nursing homes.

In July, Ms MacNeill said that it was “essential” that public nursing homes should be included under the new powers. However, the Attorney General advised that a legislative amendment would be required to bring these residences within its remit.

During a Dáil debate in July with Labour Party health spokesperson Marie Sherlock, Ms MacNeill said that Hiqa had been given numerous additional powers in recent years, but added that the agency needed “improvement”.

Following the RTE investigation, the minister had said the Government was “considering what is needed to further strengthen its regulatory role and process, in particular to reflect the changing dynamic of the nursing home sector and the ownership structures within those”.