Over 800 inspections of nursing homes were carried out by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) last year, the majority of which were unannounced.

According to the authority, it carried out a total of 838 inspections last year, just over half of which were follow-up inspections to see whether required improvements had been introduced.

"Inspections are carried out to monitor ongoing compliance with standards and regulatory requirements and to ensure continual improvement. We also receive and process significant volumes of information about nursing homes, which helps us target our inspection activities where we believe risk to service users is greatest," HIQA explained.

It has been legally responsible for the registration and inspection of all public, private and voluntary residential services for older people since July, 2009.

As of June 2012, some 28,000 people were living in 568 nursing homes nationwide. There are four different kind of inspection, including follow-up inspections and single/specific issue inspections. These occur when HIQA has received some kind of notification or information that prompts an inspection.

Fifty such inspections took place last year.

Meanwhile, of all the inspections that took place in 2012, just 79 were announced.

According to HIQA, enforcement action is only taken ‘when there are reasonable grounds to believe that there are serious risks to the health and/or welfare of residents or if there has been a substantial and significant breach of the regulations'

It noted that a ‘small number of centres' had closed in 2012 as a result of enforcement action undertaken by it. In total, 12 centres closed, seven of them voluntarily, while the other five were closed by direction of the courts.

"During 2013, we will be reviewing our approach to enforcement, ensuring that when issues of non-compliance are identified, providers will be afforded reasonable timeframes within which improvement can achieve compliance. However, we will escalate our enforcement action where we believe there is a significant risk to the health, safety and welfare of residents," HIQA added.