Harney aims to cut nursing home charges compo bill

TÁNAISTE Mary Harney is seeking to reduce the compensation bill for illegal nursing home charges by offering repayments only to those affected within the last six years.

Even then, however, the State would be left facing a bill of over €530 million.

Ms Harney told the Dáil yesterday she would like to invoke the Statute of Limitations to cap the bill.

In theory, this means the State would not have to repay those who were illegally charged before 1999 for long-term residential care in nursing homes and other institutions.

However, the statute could only be invoked against the estates of those who were deceased, the Tánaiste indicated. The advice of the Attorney General was that it could not be used against anybody who is still alive or who was of unsound mind when the charges were levied.

Almost 300,000 people charged between 1976 and 2004 were found eligible for a refund. A compensation bill of this size could amount to €2 billion.

The cost of reimbursing people illegally charged over the last six years only would amount to €532m.

To date, just over 7,000 people have phoned a specially-established helpline while another 4,263 have written letters and 514 have sent emails.

“I am keen to use the Statute of Limitations if I can, because the reality is that this is an enormous bill,” Ms Harney said.

The Tánaiste will bring her proposals for the compensation scheme to the next Cabinet meeting on April 6, but said she wanted a mechanism that saw the money involved going to those affected.

“I want the taxpayers’ money that we will pay to go to the elderly and their needs and not to the interests of legal profession,” she said.

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte again criticised the Government yesterday for the debacle.

“What we have so far is no political accountability from the Government and one civil servant promoted sideways, and as the House rises for the Easter recess, the Government is clearly calculating that media interest will wane, and that the taxpayer will cough up, and nobody is responsible.

“There was collusion in the department at the top level, politically and administratively, not to confront this issue,” he charged.