The government has come under fire for not spotting problems on the horizon for the Corrin Memorial Home.

While Tynwald members agreed more time was needed to find a solution following the announcement the home in Peel was to close, some said the Department of Health and Social Care should have known about problems earlier and stepped in.

Lawrie Hooper (LibVannin, Ramsey) argued the law required the government to ensure that such homes remained viable and that any financial problems should have been spotted earlier.

’I have heard a lot today about how there is not a lot of time left and how the department is going to struggle to step in given the legislative framework that exists around residential care homes,’ he said.

He said the problems at the Corrin Memorial Home reflected the reality of a private system of social care partially funded by taxpayers.

But he said the law placed duties on the DHSC to monitor compliance with regulations by registered providers of care homes and one of those obligations is to ensure the home is financially viable.

There was an obligation on the department monitor compliance.

’It is the department’s job to make sure that a registered provider is in fact financially viable. As far as I can make out, they do not.

’I have not heard anything from the department that has convinced me that they have actually been monitoring compliance with the law, which they are required to do by the law.’

He blasted: ’This nonsense about "we have had no time", "we did not know what was happening", actually if they had been doing the thing they were supposed to have been doing, they would have known. They would have noticed. They would have been able to see this coming.’

He said there was a process for a provider to ’surrender’ its registration. As part of that, he said, the department was required to accept a surrender application.

’This is not the case of a service whereby the provider can simply say, "I am not doing this any more." They have to make an application to the department to surrender their licence.

’The department, as part of the surrender process, is required, or rather has the option, to consider whether or not alternative arrangements need to be put in place as part of the surrender process.’

He raised fears that similar situations could be developing undetected in other social care provision from the private sector.

’There are a lot of reasons that this organisation may have failed but I am more concerned about why the regulation and the department did not pick up on any of these issues earlier.’

When questioned on why the financial difficulties were not flagged up sooner, Corrin Home director Alan Jones said they feared being closed down by government.

He added: ’Since I’ve been on the board, about two-and-a-half-years, there have been problems right from the start, but a number of issues came to a head fairly quickly earlier on this year.

’With hindsight, perhaps on reflection we could’ve looked at doing things differently, but I think our big fear was if we’d done that we’d have been automatically closed by government.’