New legislation underpinning the “fair deal” nursing home funding scheme is to be published by Minister for Health Mary Harney today.
Under the scheme, the Government will cover the cost of nursing home care, repayable from the individuals' estates after their death.
It was due to come into effect last January but was delayed for legal reasons.
Some of the difficulty is understood to have revolved around who would look after the estates of older people who were no longer compos mentis when the State sought payment after their death for their nursing home care and whether the current ward of court system was sufficient to guard their interests.
It will now come into effect next year.
Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly said earlier this month that the delay in the €110 million scheme was "having a huge impact on our hospitals".
Yesterday, Ms Harney told the Oireachtas Health Committee the Government has agreed to provide €77 million in supplementary funding to the Health Service Executive (HSE) this year to cover the cost of nursing home refunds.
Ms Harney said the HSE had revised upwards from €150 million to €227 million the amount of funding it would require for the repayments scheme this year. She said the payment of 841 claims totalling €22.1 million were on hold while the HSE awaited the extra funding.
Ms Harney indicated the total number of claims which would be processed by the repayments scheme when it had completed its work would be almost 40,000. She said the total number of valid claims was estimated at 19,167, of which 8,693 refer to living patients and 10,474 refer to estates of deceased patients.
The repayments arise out of a decision by the State to charge medical card holders in public nursing homes or in contract beds in private nursing homes for nursing home care from the mid-1970s up to late 2004 even though there was no legal basis for the charges.