Income tax hike may foot €2bn nursing home bill

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern yesterday refused to rule out an increase in income tax to cover the State’s potential €2 billion exposure on nursing home charges.

The disclosure that taxpayers may have to foot the bill for what the Travers Report concluded was 28 years of failure to deal with the legal problem in the Department of Health came amid opposition calls for Micheál Martin’s resignation over his handling of the controversy. During a day of unrelenting attacks in the Dáil, Mr Martin was portrayed by Labour leader Pat Rabbitte as a “dead man walking” with regards to his Cabinet career.

But Mr Ahern moved to quell any doubts about his confidence in the minister with an extraordinarily unabashed endorsement.

Mr Martin, said the Taoiseach, was a “great Minister for Health” and a “superb person”. The report had shown Mr Martin “was guilty of nothing”.

Mr Martin also received unqualified backing from Tánaiste Mary Harney.

The stronger nature of yesterday’s support for Mr Martin followed circumspect backing by the Taoiseach and Tánaiste immediately after the Travers report was published on Wednesday. Taken together, they strongly copperfastened Mr Martin’s position in Cabinet.

Referring to the refund bill, Mr Ahern said in excess of e1bn would have to be raised. Asked specifically if income taxes would be affected, the Taoiseach said: “Everything is possible.”

The opposition yesterday angrily refused to side with the Government’s interpretation of the report drawn up by former Forfás head John Travers.

The Taoiseach, Ms Harney and Mr Martin all argued yesterday that responsibility for failing to deal with the legal problems lay primarily with civil servants and not with ministers.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said Mr Martin’s excuse that he was not made aware of the problem or its scale was insufficient.

“The Government has tried to portray the minister, Deputy Martin, as some sort of poor innocent soul, cut off from his department and denied access to crucial information while the civil servants around him conspired to perpetrate a massive fraud,” he said.

Mr Kenny said there were three clear occasions where the minister should have informed himself of the problem, but failed to do so. He was also critical of the minister’s special advisers. They were at the meeting at which the problem was discussed, he said. “Yet, they still failed to brief their minister. Their failure is the minister’s responsibility.”

Mr Rabbitte said Mr Martin should resign because any fair reading of the Travers report would show he was in dereliction of his duty and was incompetent.

“The Government would have us believe the former Minister for Health is personally insulated in circumstances where his two ministers of state were present, where his two advisers were present, where he had received an advance briefing paper, and where he had received the minutes afterwards, and that he knows nothing, like Manuel in Fawlty Towers.

“Nobody who has ever served in Government would believe that is possible. It is entirely implausible,” Mr Rabbitte said.