Empty beds may close nursing homes

MORE than 2,000 nursing home beds are empty while hospitals have no room to take more patients, a conference heard yesterday.

Delegates at the AGM of the Irish Nursing Homes Organisation (INHO) in Wexford were told that 4,000 people could lose their jobs in the sector unless tax incentives to set up new centres were scrapped.

The workers want an end to the “short-sighted and false economy” of health board policies. They say much-needed hospital beds must be freed up by putting elderly patients who are not in need of hospital care into nursing homes.