Court challenges may hit nursing home refunds, warns Ahern

The Government’s multi-million refund scheme for illegal nursing home charges may be hit by court actions by people who feel entitled to money, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern warned today.

He told the Dáil that the Cabinet had tried to plug all legal loopholes in the repayment system which will dole out more than €850m to thousands of patients and their families.

Mr Ahern told the Dáil: “We have as carefully as you can protected the Government against legal actions, but that does not protect from people taking actions and cases in some particular area."

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny had asked Mr Ahern how certain he was that there would be no legal challenges to the scheme.

“Is there not a likelihood that there will be claims that the Government was involved in a fraudulent cover-up here? Are you not entering now into an area of grave constitutional difficulties?” he asked.

Mr Ahern replied: “We have followed the Supreme Court judgment on the Health Amendment Act, we have followed the Attorney’s advice.”

He said he could not say how many claims would come in and how much would be paid out.

“The estimate at the moment is somewhere like €850m, obviously to be paid over a number of years,” said Mr Ahern, who admitted many institutions didn’t keep proper records. “It could well go to a billion and we will have to make supplementary provisions for that.”

Around 67,000 people illegally charged for nursing home care are to be repaid in full with interest.

However, because the Statute of Limitations is to be applied to the scheme, only those alive and the estates of those who died in the last six years will be refunded the charges.

It means that the estates of deceased people, except those with mental disabilities, who died before December 1998 will not receive repayments.

Mr Ahern said the Health Service Executive is to be assisted by an outside firm with experience in managing large claims.

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said the scandal was a gross misuse of taxpayers’ money and again called for the resignation of former Health Minister Micheál Martin

Mr Rabbitte added: “To quote an American businessman: ‘A billion here and a billion there and soon you’re talking big money'.”