Nursing home charge repayments to begin next month

Compensation payments to elderly patients illegally charged in public nursing homes since the 1970s will begin next month, it emerged today.

Up to €1bn will be distributed between 20,000 people who are still alive and 50,000 estates of deceased former residents of long-stay accommodation.

The Health Service Executive is expected to announce in coming days the contractor who won the tender to administer the massive repayment fund.

The HSE had to launch a second tendering process for the management of repayments after it deemed initial quotes from applicants were too excessive.

Health Department officials today updated the Oireachtas Health Committee on the latest developments on the issue.

“Payments will begin before the end of July and we will expect substantial payments to be made before the end of September,” said Assistant Secretary Dermot Smith.

“The bulk of the payments will be in September/October. We would be very disappointed if that isn’t the case.”

The fiasco was exposed in October 2004 after inquiries by Fine Gael.

A Supreme Court judgement later ruled that money was illegally deducted from nursing home patients since the late 1970s and must be repaid.

The Government’s Travers Report into the matter blamed systemic corporate failure within the Health Department for the failure to uncover the discrepancy over several years.

The then Minister for Health Micheal Martin was heavily criticised by the Opposition and secretary general of the department, Michael Kelly was later transferred to another position.

The Health (Nursing Homes) (Amendment) Bill 2006 was urgently drafted and is expected to be signed into law within days.

Opposition parties claimed that the Social and Family Affairs Department could handle the scheme.

Fianna Fáil Committee member Terry Leyden warned that the non-contributory pension entitlements of elderly people should not be affected by nursing home payments.

Speaking generally on the issue, he said: “It is a disaster for the Department and for public funding.”

Secretary General of the department, Michael Scanlan assured committee members that the HSE was doing its best to speed up the rate of replies to parliamentary questions submitted to it.