A total of €380 million is expected to be repaid to patients illegally charged for their nursing home care, it has emerged.
The Oireachtas health committee heard last month that the nursing home repayments scheme would cost substantially less than the €1 billion initially predicted.
Minister for Health Mary Harney indicated that payments to the end of 2007 would be about €132 million with a further final allocation of €150 million for 2008. However, in a written parliamentary reply just before the Dáil adjourned for the Christmas recess, figures from the Minister showed the scheme would cost an extra €100 million, still some €600 million less than predicted.
Ms Harney told Dublin North East Labour TD Tommy Broughan in her reply that "the HSE has indicated that based on the number of valid applications received to date, the estimated total amount of money repaid will be approximately €380 million.
"The costs of administering the repayment scheme will be additional to this amount," she added.
Some 40 per cent of the approximately 33,000 applications for the nursing homes repayment scheme would be rejected, Ms Harney also reiterated in further replies.
So far €105.8 million has been refunded to 5,346 applicants and offers totalling €160 million were made to 8,320 other applicants.
But Mayo Fine Gael TD Michael Ring accused the State of engaging in a "scandal" by making offers to people to see what they would accept, in an attempt to save the State money.
The community, rural and Gaeltacht affairs spokesman had also raised the issue in parliamentary questions and he said he knew people to whom offers had been made and when they rejected those offers, they received more money.
It was confusing people, he said yesterday.
"They should pay people what they are owed and not be offering to see what they might accept."
The Mayo TD also hit out at the length of time it was taking to process the applications and issue payments.
"It's taking so long in spite of them putting it out to private contactors," he said.
"They have enough staff in the Department of Health. They have hundreds of people and should have been well able to administer the scheme without going to the private sector, and still taking too long."
The HSE had informed her department 40 per cent of applications would be refused and that "5,567 rejection letters have been issued".
The Health Repayment Scheme Appeals Office had notified her department that 2,000 applicants said they would appeal the refusal, but 895 appeals had actually been received at the time.
Almost 3,000 applications were refused because they were linked to institutions outside the scope of the scheme.
The scheme will refund the estate of patients who have died, but only for those deceased from December 9th, 1998 and afterwards.
Some 1,603 applications were made for people who died prior to that date.
Other applications were rejected where a patient had been admitted to a nursing home after December 9th, 2004 or where duplicate claims were submitted for a patient.
The repayments arise out of a decision by the State to charge medical card holders in public nursing homes or in contract beds in private nursing homes for nursing home care from the mid-1970s up to late 2004 even though there was no legal basis for the charges.
