Change in nursing-home charges due

DAIL REPORT: The Government hopes to introduce amending legislation this week to regularise a scheme that charges residents of public nursing homes for their accommodation, at a cost of €10 million a month.

Health boards were ordered last week to stop charging elderly people in public nursing homes or in contract beds for their accommodation.

This was on the basis of advice from the Attorney General that it was illegal to use residents' pensions to pay part of their accommodation.

The Taoiseach told the Dáil yesterday that the Government would like to introduce the legislation this week before the House recesses tomorrow for the Christmas break.

Mr Ahern said the ongoing cost of the scheme was €10 million a month, but rejected suggestions that the money should be refunded to pensioners back to 2001.

An anomaly rose in legislation passed three years ago when medical cards were extended to the over-70s.

In principle, those over 70 are entitled to free medical care, but the pensions of residents of public nursing homes have nonetheless gone directly to the institutions.

"The Attorney General's advice is that we do not have to go back over the period," Mr Ahern said. "It's not even clear what period you'd have to go back to.

"Some argue that the first time this was raised was in a Supreme Court case in 1976. Others say it was when the health board received its advice."

Opposition health spokespeople were to be briefed last night on the legislation to rectify the issue.

The Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, who raised the issue, said he assumed Ms Mary Harney had had no knowledge of this situation when she was appointed as Minister for Health, but it was certainly not clear if her predecessor, Mr Micheal Martin, "had any knowledge of the issue and did nothing about it".

He asked why it was not dealt with in 2002 when a health board first raised concerns about the legality of charging the over-70s.

He said that the Government's "claim that this is an inadvertent consequence of the 2001 Act just doesn't stand up.

"If that was the case why did the Government not do anything about it before this?"

It was a matter for the Government to introduce and oversee the consequences of primary legislation, he said.

"It's not good enough to say that you had to wait for the health board to seek legal advice.

"You can't have a situation where advice is given to a health board where it means that a charge in that health board area is illegal and legal in another health board area because they haven't chosen to take advice."

He said that on the basis of charges of €10 million a month, the cost of repaying them would be about €300 million.

Rejecting the possibility of a refund, Mr Ahern said that health boards dealt with the charges in different ways.

"Some of them charge, some of them don't charge. They charge in different ways. They have different systems," he said.

The view of the Department of Health and successive Ministers was that there should be payment for care in health boards, but the Attorney General's "firm view" was that the legislation to grant the power to have a charge did not exist.

"That is the issue which must be dealt with in the legislation," the Taoiseach said.