Nursing homes will have no choice but to pass on some or all of the State's new inspection registration fee to residents, their representative body said today.
Nursing Homes Ireland welcomed the announcement by Minister for Health and Children Mary Harney of the "long-awaited" standards for residential care settings for older people.
But the body said the registration and licensing fee regime proposed was "exorbitant, unrealistic and unsustainable".
The standards officially published today will be enforced by a team of almost 50 inspectors from the Health Information Quality Authority (HIQA) from July onwards.
It will be the first time that both public and private nursing homes will be subject to inspections by an independent authority.
Nursing Homes Ireland chief executive Tadhg Daly said the organisation was "firmly behind" the proposed HIQA standards.
"However, the Minister needs to be aware of the burden, both financial and administrative, that the annual licence fee of €190.00 per bed will impose on nursing home residents.
"For an average 50-bed nursing home, this fee represents almost €10,000 per year in additional costs. This is almost four times what it is in the UK (£2,186 per nursing home) and is 45 times higher than the current fee paid.
"This fee has been imposed without consultation with the sector as to the most appropriate and viable fee structure, resulting in a fee being set at a level that is punitive. Sadly, our members will have no choice but to pass some or all of this cost on to residents."
Mr Daly said the standards proposed were "rigorous, and rightly so".
"For the inspections to be meaningful and regular, the State will have to bear some of the cost of regulation, as it does in other jurisdictions. The Minister has given no thought to serious resource implications involved in this process for a sector that is already being paid much less by the Government for its services than its European counterparts.”
He said the private and voluntary nursing home sector in Ireland employs more than 18,000 people and provides 65 per cent of long-term care beds.
"The HIQA standards are a positive move by the Minister. However, these standards must be supported by a feasible, reasonable, fair implementation plan, that does not overburden small businesses with massive additional costs and a significant administrative burden."
Separately, the advocacy group Age Action Ireland welcomed the new care standards for nursing homes as “a landmark in the drive to protect the most vulnerable of our older people”.
Chief executive Robin Webster said the new standards “are focused on the needs of the residents and, if stringently monitored and enforced, should raise standards of care in our nursing homes to a new level”.
“The acid test will be how the standards protect the most vulnerable residents, such as those with dementia,” he added.
Under the new standards the use of open wards will cease and individual care plans for all nursing home residents will be introduced.
As well as phasing out the use of open wards, the new standards will set minimum standards for bedroom sizes, en-suite facilities and limits on numbers of patients to each ward.
They will allow a six-year window for all existing nursing homes to meet these requirements.