Sir, – Your coverage of a report commissioned by the Minister of State for Older People makes for interesting reading (“Holding nursing-home owners accountable ‘legally challenging’ due to corporate ownership”, Health, July 2nd).The report, which highlighted the increasing level of ownership of nursing homes in Ireland by large corporate entities, a number of which are located outside the State, confirms a trend widely commented on by others in recent years.While your report rightly focuses on the challenges this can provide for the regulator, it is worth asking the question: what public policy document, in relation to care of older people, suggested that this move towards ownership by large corporate entities was desirable?There are reasons why we should be concerned about large corporates being involved in the care of older people; most especially those where private equity firms are the beneficial owners. The evidence from the US and the UK in this regard can make for grim reading. Since the Covid-19 pandemic some suggestions have been made for rebalancing ownership models across the public, private and social enterprise sectors. Important points have been made about the need for HSE demonstrator models of congregated care in each health region, which could be university-linked teaching facilities, exemplars of high-quality care and pathfinders for a resident focused culture of care delivered in clusters of small-scale household style models of living.Clinical governance of nursing homes remains a serious weakness. Given the problems that arose in the early stages of the pandemic through sectoral distancing of the private nursing homes from the provider of last resort – the HSE – it is critical that overall clinical governance for all nursing homes in the six HSE regions should now become the responsibility of the HSE and should be resourced accordingly. – Yours, etc,MERVYN TAYLOR,StillorganDublin.