THE GOVERNMENT has agreed to provide €77 million in supplementary funding to the Health Service Executive (HSE) this year to cover the cost of nursing home refunds.
Minister for Health Mary Harney told the Oireachtas Health Committee yesterday the HSE had revised upwards from €150 million to €227 million the amount of funding it would require for the repayments scheme this year.
She said the payment of 841 claims totalling €22.1 million were on hold while the HSE awaited the extra funding.
Ms Harney indicated the total number of claims which would be processed by the repayments scheme when it had completed its work would be almost 40,000.
She said the total number of valid claims was estimated at 19,167, of which 8,693 refer to living patients and 10,474 refer to estates of deceased patients.
The repayments arise out of a decision by the State to charge medical card holders in public nursing homes or in contract beds in private nursing homes for nursing home care from the mid-1970s up to late 2004 even though there was no legal basis for the charges.
Ms Harney also told the committee there would be a requirement for another supplementary estimate for the HSE later in the year to cover the cost of the new hospital consultants’ contracts.
The HSE is waiting to see how many consultants opt for the new contracts, which offer significantly higher salaries, before finalising the amount it requires.
Meanwhile Ms Harney confirmed the long-awaited legislation underpinning the “fair deal” nursing home funding scheme would finally be published today, and the scheme, she said, would come into effect next year.
The scheme, which was due to come into effect last January and which would have allowed older people to pay for their care beyond the grave, had been delayed for legal reasons.
Some of the difficulty is understood to have revolved around who would look after the estates of older people who were no longer compos mentis when the State sought payment after their death for their nursing home care and whether the current ward of court system was sufficient to guard their interests.