Final bill of €365m for nursing home repayments scheme

THE HEALTH Service Executive expects the final offers in the nursing home repayments scheme to be issued before the end of the year.

The total cost of the scheme is expected to be about €365 million of which €317 million has already been paid to 14,900 claimants, according to Minister for Health Mary Harney.

She told Mayo Fine Gael TD Michael Ring in a parliamentary reply that some 35,000 claims were made.

The scheme refunds patients who were illegally charged for public nursing home care or for contract beds in private nursing homes, despite having medical card entitlement to free care. The charges continued from the mid-1970s until 2004.

A total of 19,167 applications have been accepted as valid under the terms of the repayment. Of those claims 8,693 refer to living residents and 10,474 refer to the estates of deceased patients.

"Upwards of 300" applicants have yet to receive offers of payment. "Further offers continue to be issued every week," the Minister said.

Mr Ring had asked why the scheme was delayed and why the claims of outstanding applicants had not been finalised and paid, since the legislation to allow for repayment was passed in 2006.

The Minister insisted that the scheme was "progressing as speedily as possible and every effort is being made to settle claims as quickly as possible".

Ms Harney pointed out, however, that there were a lot of "deficiencies" in claims forms which had to be rectified before the claim could be processed and two-thirds of applications submitted were "without some critical piece of information" and the administrator had to write to the claimant seeking the information.

The applications include the estates of nursing home residents who have since died and Ms Harney pointed out that in more than 13,400 of the cases the scheme administrator had to establish probate before the claim could be processed. There was a strong emphasis in the repayment legislation that the applicant "would be the rightful recipient of any potential repayment".

This, said Ms Harney, "would be particularly important in determining who is eligible in the case of a deceased person where no grant of probate was made and where several family members might make an application for repayment".

While the final offers would be made before the end of the year, Ms Harney pointed out that the repayments would not be paid until the "statutory 28-day period for appeal" had elapsed.

In October the Government agreed to provide €77 million in supplementary funding to the HSE to cover the revised cost of the fees. Payment for 841 claims worth €22.1 million were on hold because of a lack of funding.