Reaction:The new plan for funding long-term care was welcomed last night by the Conference of Religious of Ireland (Cori), but Age Action Ireland called it ageist.
Fr Seán Healy of Cori said the plan was seeking to address a major challenge facing Irish society, which has a growing population of older people.
"It treats all people equally, it seems to at least on initial inspection . . . people will be asked to contribute on the basis of their means and their assets and that's the same for everybody, and everybody will be sure that their family won't have to come up with cash to pay for their care and I think both of those are certainly principles that will be welcome," he said.
"I also think it seeks to support public and private care in the same way and if that works out, then that's very welcome as well," he added.
"Obviously everybody would be more than happy if the full care could be borne by the exchequer, but you have to face up to the actual bills involved," he said. He cautioned that when the plan is worked out in detail, it "may throw up some anomalies that aren't apparent on a first read".
Eamon Timmins of Age Action Ireland said he felt there was good and bad in the scheme.
"We think the new scheme is an improvement on the old regulations, which were causing so much hardship. So many people were forced to sell their homes under the old regulations . . . the new regulations won't force people to sell their homes when they're alive.
"But I don't think it takes away all the worries. We've had a lot of calls to Age Action already where people are concerned about their inheritance rights and what they can bequeath to their sons and daughters and people are concerned about that," he said.
"And our other big concern is that Age Action Ireland is campaigning against ageism and we see a lot of ageism in the health service and no matter which way you twist and turn this, this is an ageist piece of legislation. This is a new form of charge for the health services and it's not being charged against any other section of society but older people. And older people are being penalised here because of the growth in the number of older people," he added.
The Irish Nursing Homes Organisation's chief executive, Tadhg Daly, welcomed the plan, but remained cautious about its implementation.