Groups from around the country are meeting in Dublin today to launch a petition calling for the rights of care partners at nursing homes and hospitals to be written into law.
The Care Champions group is made up of the families of nursing home residents and aims to find solutions to support residents and their families.
The petition has been signed by the Alzhimer Society of Ireland, Care Alliance Ireland, the Irish Association of Social Workers and the Nursing Home Quality Initiative.
The care partner scheme has been implemented in other countries and allows at least one family member to have unlimited access to a resident in a nursing home or a patient in a hospital regardless of a potential outbreak.
Pat Coyle's wife Veronica died at Ballynoe Nursing Home in February 2021.
Pat will be attending today's event and he told RedFM News that the government needs to carry out a public inquiry into what happened at nursing homes across the country during the pandemic:
"Get the public inquiry in place. And learn from it going forward we have to better safeguarding rules in place. We need care partner. We need the whole aspect of nursing homes, hospitals, how families interact with their family members in there, has to be looked at."
