Long-term residents of publicly funded nursing homes will have to pay up to 80 per cent of their pensions towards their accommodation, according to new legislation which passed all stages in the Dáil yesterday.
The residents will, however, be left with a minimum of 35 in pocket money when the regulations are applied, according to the Minister for Health, Ms Harney, who introduced the Health (Amendment) (Number 2) Bill to legalise the charge on pensioners. It was passed by 65 votes to 53.
The Bill also provides that the charges "are and always have been lawful". Ms Harney said the mistake in charging dated back 28 years.
She said that successive governments had introduced charges for long-term care on those who could afford it since 1954. Charges made since a 1976 Supreme Court judgment were based on a circular issued by the Department of Health to health boards, which allowed them to consider residents as not fully eligible for free care because they received GP and surgical services, and thus to charge them.
The Tánaiste said that these charges "currently generate approximately 100 million in revenue for health boards each year. The cost of long-term care, even of the shelter and maintenance part, was clearly more than this amount.
"There is no doubt that the loss of this income would have an adverse effect on our ability to provide the health and caring services people need."
Fine Gael's health spokesman, Dr Liam Twomey, accused the Tánaiste of trying to "put some blame on the elderly for the cost they will impose on the Exchequer" and she "implies that there will be a reduction in other health services if this problem is not sorted out now and if the State has to repay the elderly patients the charges that were made illegally on them for years".
It was a "disgraceful way of governing and a disgraceful way to treat elderly patients. It was discrimination between those who could stand up for themselves and those who could not."
Labour's health spokeswoman, Ms Liz McManus said that "an apology would have been appropriate and would not have compromised the Minister". The Bill arose "because of a failure by this Government to address an injustice that consisted of the State raiding the pockets of the elderly and infirm".
Ms Harney said the Government "recognises that a mistake has been made for 28 years on the legal basis for charges. Notwithstanding the fact that the policy had consistent support and that people did actually receive a benefit for their payment, the Government believes that some repayment should be made because a mistake was made. It is clearly beyond our financial and administrative ability to repay all charges since 1976."
She insisted that the legislation would "bring clarity to an area which has not been operating on a sound basis going back nearly 30 years".
