Mick Clifford: When it comes to the vulnerable, bean counters and their masters can pinch pennies for Ireland

The nursing homes scandal highlights a theme that appears constant in the administration of public finances to vulnerable groups.

The nursing home charges issue, which exploded into politics this week, raises various questions about public finances and morality at an official level. Where stands the balance between looking after public money and taking care of citizens who were wronged in the past? What obligation does the state have to citizens, often vulnerable, who are also legal opponents? Are there any moral constraints in paying for the wrongs done in the past at the cost of taking care of citizens in the present?

These questions are all valid topics of debate. However, a theme that appears to be constant in the administration of public finances is that when it comes to vulnerable groups, elected and permanent governments manage to display a degree of prudence that is absent in many other areas of spending.

A perfect example of this approach is the saga around the Disabled Drivers and Passengers Scheme. In 1989 there was finally a recognition that some people with disabilities require assistance with transport. For the vast swathes of the country not sufficiently serviced by public transport, a private car was the only option. Drivers and passengers with a disability required the vehicles to be adapted to their needs. So the finance act included provision for tax relief in VRT and VAT for the work to be done. The estimated cost of tax revenue foregone was £80m.

Roll on to 2001. Following an investigation on foot of a slew of complaints, the Ombudsman determined that disabled motorists were being ill-served by the scheme. In a report, ‘Passengers with Disabilities’, he found that decisions to refuse tax relief were “unreasonable, unfair and inappropriate” and contrary to “fair and sound” administration by the Revenue Commissioners. In particular, the criteria to qualify for tax relief were too narrow.

The outcome was the setting up of an interdepartmental group that recommended that the minister for finance introduce legislation to replace existing medical criteria with one which included people with mobility issues. This would be in line with the Ombudsman’s findings. There was, however, resistance in the Department of Finance. Extending the scheme could blow a hole in the national coffers, apparently. The amount at issue wasn’t specified, but even, at the upper end of cost, if it doubled to £160m per annum, surely this was a measure that was badly needed and life-altering for people with disabilities.

Nothing happened. In 2002, a few months after the interdepartmental report was completed, Charlie McCreevy announced his budget. “Budgets I have introduced helped to secure the most sustained period of investment and growth in the history of the country … a major step up in the funding of our public services…improving the living standards of both taxpayers and social welfare recipients alike.” There was nothing in the speech for disabled drivers and passengers.

So it continued to be for over fifteen years, through the boom times, the boomier times, the crash, the recession, and the recovery. 

It didn’t matter whether times were good or bad. If the disabled drivers and passengers didn’t have the political muscle then their plight was to be ignored

 The Ombudsman’s report gathered dust and the permanent government looked the other way. Cabinets came and went and, not unlike the scenario with nursing home charges, incoming ministers simply nodded through policy that predated their tenure.

In 2018, two families took a High Court action after they were refused tax relief by an appeal board. One of the children had to manage the risk of hip dysplasia and hip migration. “She will continue to need the help of specialised equipment to walk short distances as she gets older,” the court documents related. “Otherwise she will require a wheelchair.”

The second applicant had a “genetic condition, which, in his case, has resulted in longstanding, widespread joint and spinal pain which has progressed into a secondary chronic pain syndrome and is severely disabled.” Despite these serious conditions, the families in both these cases were deemed unworthy of receipt of a tax concession.

The High Court ruled that the minister was entitled to set the criteria as he saw fit and the Court of Appeal affirmed this position. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the families, saying the state had failed to vindicate their rights under the 1989 Finance Act.

Following that the government suspended the scheme and in 2021 introduced an amendment that allowed the Minister for Finance to once more keep the criteria as narrow as he or she believes it should be. Another review of the scheme was set up and that is ongoing, nearly three years after the Supreme Court ruling.

 Last year, the appeal board, which was constrained by the minister’s criteria, resigned en masse, thoroughly frustrated at how the whole issue is being handled

Now and again the saga is raised in the Dáil. Last year, Paschal Donohoe gave this reply to a question on it from Fianna Fáil’s James Lawless.

“As the deputy will appreciate this scheme confers substantial benefits to eligible persons and changing the medical criteria to more general mobility-focused criteria, would raise the already considerable cost of the scheme in terms of tax foregone to the exchequer. Any increase in the cost of the scheme would require a concomitant increase in tax, reduction in public expenditure, or increase in the exchequer deficit.”

Really? Making provision for adults and children with various disabilities, like those afflicting the two litigants who had to go all the way to the Supreme Court, could add noticeably to the national deficit, or require hiking of taxes? 

Twenty-two years after a glaring injustice was recognised by the Ombudsman there has been precious little done to alleviate the plight of those affected.

Every year the Comptroller and Auditor General outlines where public money has been flushed down the drain. Infrastructure cost overruns, inefficient use of budgets, new buildings remaining unoccupied, tax breaks that show little return for the exchequer, and on it goes. All of this is tolerated annually with a shrug of the shoulders.

However, when it comes to some sections of society, particularly those that don’t have political power in one guise or another, the bean counters and their political masters can pinch pennies for Ireland. It is all done far from the public and political glare. Every action, including expensive and protracted trips to court, is undertaken in defence of the public purse as successive cabinets keep nodding through the policy because it predated their arrival.

Every now and again some human element to what is being quietly tolerated surfaces and there is public and political opposition outrage. And then the caravan moves on and those at the sharp end of this warped version of financial prudence continue to bear their burden on the margins.