The chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Mr Michael Finucane, sharply rebuked the Department of Health for the failure of health boards to pay nursing home subventions.
Describing the issue as "a sorry saga", Mr Finucane told yesterday's meeting of the committee that the Ombudsman had made a damning report.
"Many of us, as public representatives through that period, had families of elderly people coming to us about the issue. They were appalled at being questioned about their income in support of the nursing home subvention. The interpretation of the rules was flouted."
The secretary general of the Department of Health and Children, Mr Michael Kelly, said: "I think that the performance of the health system, in relation to responding to this particular issue, has been poor. I have to acknowledge that. I think that the Department, in the first instance, was slow to detect the problem."
However, Mr Kelly said the Department was not taking responsibility for the "actions or inactions" of health boards. In 1998, the Department had asked the boards to deal with the issue. "I think we are entitled to assume that funding, which is allocated for a particular purpose, is followed through on that basis by the boards." The problems originated in the introduction in 1993 of a scheme of subsidies of the cost of nursing-home care.
The Department insisted that in working out the amount of the grant, which a person could receive, the income of their children should be taken into account.
The Ombudsman's report revealed that advice given to the Department and the health boards over the years was that there was no legal basis for taking children's income into account. Also, nursing-home residents in most health board areas were wrongly deprived of pocket money to which they were entitled.
Mr Kelly said the nursing home subvention scheme had two principal objectives: to ensure high standards of accommodation and care in all nursing homes and provide a system of subvention of nursing home costs. Article 8.2, provided that each health board, when assessing the means of an applicant, disregard one-fifth of the rate of old age non-contributory pensions, with the amount being retained by each person for their own use.
This was known as the "pocket money" provision, he said. The committee is to meet representatives of health boards in January.
