FF says Coalition handling of crisis in nursing home scheme is 'ham-fisted'

FIANNA FÁIL has described the Government’s handling of the crisis in the Fair Deal nursing home scheme as “ham-fisted”.

The party’s health spokesman Billy Kelleher said the Government “did not take into account the concerns and anxiety it created for many thousands of people throughout the country”.

Minister for Health Dr James Reilly, however, described his comments as “a bit rich” and said “this mess occurred because the previous government underfunded the scheme”.

He also rejected Mr Kelleher’s claim that there was no need to suspend the scheme in the first place.

The Fianna Fáil TD said that “those who applied for the Fair Deal nursing home scheme and did not get approval because of the suspension will now seek approval” so it should not have been stopped. The Minister said it would have been “utterly irresponsible” to do anything else until the situation had been clarified.

Approval of applications for the scheme was suspended because of a shortfall in funding but will start again next week. The scheme involves applicants contributing 80 per cent of pensions and income and 5 per cent of assets.

Mr Kelleher was also critical of the failure by the Minister, the Department and the HSE to issue a statement when the scheme was suspended. “The information was extracted by stealth over that weekend and the following week until it was raised in the House and we eventually got a statement from the Minister.”

Sinn Féin health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin criticised the Minister for failing make himself “fully accountable” to the Dáil by answering questions about the suspension of the scheme when he was “not shy about speaking to the media in a selective manner”.

He said that since January, more than 1,600 acute and continuing care public hospital beds had been closed; therefore the “knock- on effect of this crisis in the care of older people is very far-reaching”. He called for the applications of 500 people in acute hospital beds to be fast-tracked.

Catherine Murphy (Ind, Kildare North) believed from the Minister’s remarks that the computer system in place was “sick”, because of his concern with the information he had received.

She said that if “you design an information system you do so against the system already in place. That tells me that the system now in place is sick.”