Patient kept in Kilkenny hospital months longer than needed due to transfer delays

A lack of resources for home care is putting unnecessary strain on an already pressurised hospital system

Published 22nd Jun 2026, 19:30 BST St Luke's General Hospital in Kilkenny A lack of resources for home care is putting unnecessary strain on an already pressurised hospital system Sign up to our Kilkenny Live newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know you can manage your profile, and explore all of the available newsletters from Kilkenny Live within your account.

A 99-year-old dementia patient has had to stay at St Luke’s General Hospital for four months despite only needing to be there for five days due to delayed transfer of care, according to a Kilkenny TD.

Sinn Féin’s Natasha Newsome Drennan highlighted the case at an Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health, which focused on ageing in Ireland and the need to divert from an over-reliance on nursing homes.

Delayed transfer of care occurs when a patient is ready to leave hospital but is still occupying a bed to home care or other supports not being available for them.

Deputy Newsome Drennan used this example to call for greater emphasis on recruitment for home carers to save resources.

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“In St Luke’s in Kilkenny, there is an average of ten beds for delayed transfers of care and I have had a number of families contact me in relation to that,” she said. “One woman has been in hospital for four months. She needed to be there for five days.”

“There is a lack of home care. I have sent questions to the HSE in relation to a recruitment drive for home carers, which I am not seeing. I am not getting any answers back either. However, we need to see that recruitment.”

“I spoke of this lady whose family had contacted me. She is 99 and a half years of age. She has dementia. It cannot be that you are just treated as a number; it has to be individual cases. In this case, the family member is also looking after her father, and this lady is her aunt,” she added.

The high cost of relying on nursing homes to provide care for individuals like these was also raised by Deputy Newsome Drennan, tying in with the meeting’s theme of development for alternate care methods.

“If the HSE were to pay for nursing home care for them, it would be about €1,600 per week each. Instead of doing that in every situation, including where people do not want to be in nursing homes and their families cannot continue affording it, how could we spend that money better?” she asked.

“The Mount Carmel Supported Care Home in Callan, County Kilkenny, has 20 beds in its centre, but it also has individual front doors so that people have support but can also come in and out and use the centre, such as for nutrition where they can come in and have their dinners.”

“We need to see more of this. The people have supports from doctors, day care services and everything else,” she continued.

The Deputy concluded by reiterating the need for divergence from the status quo of the nursing home care model and called for greater recruitment of carers and community-based solutions.

“I want to see a proper recruitment drive from the HSE for home carers, but that it not being. We need the likes of the Mount Carmel Supported Care Home in every community,” she outlined.

I know we have smaller villages, but in the village where I’m from, it is three villages in one, where there is one sports team and we have a few houses there that are connected to a doctor.”

“We need to see more home care centres with individual beds so that when people need that extra support, they can go in for a time. I want to see that.”

Related topics: Natasha Newsome Drennan Hospital HSE Sign up to our Kilkenny Live newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know you can manage your profile, and explore all of the available newsletters from Kilkenny Live within your account.