Health memo 'vital and new'

A previously undisclosed memo to Government shows that Department of Health officials warned as far back as December 2003 that charges levied on medical card patients in nursing homes were illegal.

The Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, which is examining the nursing home controversy, was told yesterday that the draft memo was given to the former department secretary general, Michael Kelly, on the eve of a meeting with ministers and health board chiefs in December 2003 at which the charges issue was discussed.

The chairman of the committee, John Maloney TD, last night told The Irish Times that the memo was "vital and new" and had not been included in the official Travers report on the controversy. He said that Mr Kelly had made no reference to the memo in his evidence to the committee and was likely to be recalled.

Labour Party health spokeswoman Liz McManus TD said some Ministers were also likely to be recalled to face further questioning.

In the memo Department of Health officials said it appeared that medical card holders were exempt from long stay charges under the existing statutory framework. They suggested that if this was the case the State faced a potential loss of income of €66 million in 2003.

Details of the memo were contained in a submission to the committee yesterday by John Travers,author of the official report.

"A briefing document including a draft memorandum for Government does appear to have been provided for the information of the secretary general on 15th December 2003," he said.

The next day top officials on the department's management advisory committee, as well as the then minister Micheál Martin, his two ministers of State, Ivor Callely TD and Tim O'Malley TD, discussed the issue of long stay charges with health board chiefs.

The committee has been told that up to that point the department believed the charges were legally defensible. However the introduction to the new memorandum states: "There have been growing difficulties with the legislation in this area arising from court judgments, the absence of a specific statutory framework to reflect the changing nature of care in this area and, in particular, the decision to grant automatic entitlement to medical cards for persons over 70 years."