Ombudsman claims most of illegal nursing bill was avoidable

The Ombudsman says much of the bill for the illegal nursing homes charges could have been avoided - if the Dept. of Health had passed on legal advice it had on the issue to her office.

At the time her office was investigating the issue. The tax payer now faces a bill of billions

There were intense discussions in the early nineties between the Department and the Ombudsman on the issue.

But over several years legal advice and evidence available to the Department was not passed on.

Emily O'Reilly believes her predecessor could have reported more fully and definitively on the matter if he'd been given the information.

She says had the matter been resolved then, many of the overpayments which now have to be refunded, would never have arisen.

She also says a 2001 report from her office identified systems failures within Government and commented that they'd contributed to the nursing home charges problem.

This was not acted on, and the same failures were there in the department in late 2004, when Minister Micheál Martin claims he was not informed properly about the issue