Solicitor responds to tribunal censure

In October 2004, my legal practise, together with another legal practise in Cork, identified that the deduction of 80% of the pensions of public nursing home patients was illegal.

We established that there was no legislation giving power to the Minister to authorise the health board to deduct these monies.

As a result of us identifying this defect, emergency legislation was passed in December 2004, in an attempt by the Government of the day to protect the procedure that was in place and also legalise the previous deductions. We corresponded with the Department of Health threatening that we would take a constitutional challenge to the legislation.