Elderly ‘won’t pay’ for Fair Deal reforms

A detailed Government review of the Fair Deal scheme will not increase costs for vulnerable elderly people or end the universal legal right to access the service when it is given to the Department of Health next week.

Minister of state with responsibility for the area Kathleen Lynch specifically ruled out the potential moves yesterday despite warning that the €950m system needs another €30m every year and insisting that reforms must ensure the service becomes demand-led, rather that budget-led.

Speaking 24 hours after she told the Oireachtas health committee “the notion you would pay €260-€290 for a service costing anything up to €1,200 is unsustainable”, Ms Lynch stressed struggling families will not face extra costs or lose supports.

However, she admitted serious changes need to be implemented as the system is so overloaded with demand that waiting lists for nursing home places under the scheme are expected to rise from 11 weeks to 20 weeks by the end of the year — placing yet more pressure on Ireland’s hospital overcrowding crisis.

“There is a budget but it is a budget that can run over, but with Fair Deal it is capped and if you run out of money, you run out of money,” she told RTÉ’s Today With Seán O’Rourke programme.

“What I’m saying to you is that, as the minister responsible, I can tell you now it [the extra money] is not in relation to increasing the contribution from the person in need of the service because the good thing about this scheme is that it is accessible to everyone.”

Ms Lynch said the review of the Fair Deal scheme —which was introduced in 2009 and involves pensioners paying 80% of their income and 7.5% a year of their assets to the State — is due to be handed to the secretary general of the Department of Health “early next week”.

This document will then be discussed by cabinet at the beginning of next month, with any recommended changes expected to be put in place by September.

While Ms Lynch has insisted that the €30m in extra funding that is required to restructure the Fair Deal scheme must come from the exchequer, it is likely that the departments of finance and public expenditure and reform will have a different opinion on the latest expense.

During a Dáil debate on Wednesday, Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin said he does not focus on the expenditure of health, but on what value can be obtained.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher said the need to provide more funding for the Fair Deal scheme proves the system is failing to meet the needs of vulnerable elderly people, and is having a damaging knock-on effect on the rest of the health service.

“It is completely unacceptable waiting lists are putting families under intolerable stress and financial pressure,” he said. “In real terms, despite all the rhetoric, there are 400 fewer places on the Fair Deal scheme today than there were in 2013.”

Speaking for the patients involved, geriatric medicine specialist Prof Des O’Neill said that, regardless of what comes from the Fair Deal review, the current problems and focus on money instead of need show a “major problem” in how Irish society “sees older people”.