MINISTER FOR Health Mary Harney again ruled out compensation for older people who claimed they were denied nursing home care.

She said many of the cases taken against the State were by estates of the deceased.

“If we were to compensate, we reckon it would be in the region of €7 billion,” she said. “That would be from today’s services. There is not a pot of money to compensate people.”

Ms Harney was responding to a Fine Gael Private Members’ motion highlighting the controversial report of Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly criticising the Government on the issue.

The report followed an investigation into the right to nursing home care in Ireland, based on 1,200 complaints over 25 years. They were mostly from people who could not get public nursing home care or adequate help from the State towards private care.

Ms O’Reilly suggested the Department of Health consider a limited scheme to compensate those families who suffered the most hardship.

Her report also accused the Government and State agencies of refusing to co-operate with the inquiry and displaying an unacceptable “disregard for the law”.

Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly accused the Government of unacceptable interference in the ombudsman’s role. He said the ombudsman had encountered “unprecedented opposition and a lack of co-operation from the Department of Health and the HSE”.

Thousands of old people, he said, may have been deprived of their legal entitlement to nursing home care under the Health Act 1970 over four decades.

The Government, he added, had consistently failed to clarify entitlements to nursing home care, causing huge frustration and anxiety among older people and their families.

The ombudsman, said Dr Reilly, had been accused of displaying arrogance in purporting to interpret the law. “I think it would be fair to say that when it comes to displays of arrogance, this Government has been guilty more than anyone else or any other body I know of,” he added.

Dr Reilly accused the department and the HSE of saying that the ombudsman had undertaken the investigation in bad faith. “On the other hand, the ombudsman states that her motivation to produce this report was to highlight the very significant difficulties faced over several decades by families seeking to make arrangements for long-term nursing home care for a family member,” he added.

Dr Reilly said his party believed that important issues had been raised about the ombudsman’s important role and how she should discharge it. “The Minister and the department, or an agency of the State, must not be allowed to frustrate statutory investigations.”

Ms Harney said under Irish legislation the ombudsman’s role was confined to administrative malpractice. “The ombudsman is not entitled to interpret the law, to make the law, nor is the ombudsman entitled to the State’s legal strategy,” she added.

Ms Harney said certain information sought by the ombudsman had been refused on the Attorney General’s strong advice that she was outside her jurisdiction.

The department, said Ms Harney, would undermine its position if its legal strategy was to be the subject of an investigation by the ombudsman.