Madam, - I am writing to protest in the strongest terms at the announcement by Mary Harney, Minister for Health, of the Nursing Home Care Support Scheme. This scheme is particularly insidious in the unprecedented manner in which it allows the State to reach into the value of a family's most prized, and often only, asset, the family home, and anti-democratic in the way it has been presented by the Minister.
As a result of this scheme, many older people of average means and their heirs will be forced to arrange for the selling of their homes once they have died, in order to pay this new tax of five per cent per annum to a maximum of 15 per cent of the value of their family home. Note of course that those with substantial incomes will not be affected by this measure, as the scheme will be means tested.
The implications for inheritance, not to mention the principle of protection of private property, still remain to be fully examined. What is certain, however, is that people who have paid taxes all their lives and who have struggled to pay mortgages for exorbitant house prices will have to pay yet again with their homes, simply for being old and, worse luck, having a condition which needs a high level of care. Those who do not need this high level of care will be offered only the "choice" of staying at home, regardless of their family circumstances.
Moreover, I doubt very much that the proposed levies will remain at the 15 per cent level. Like everything else in this country they can only go up once the principle has been accepted, which seems to be the case with alarming alacrity.
The cynicism with which this scheme was presented to the public meets a new low for this Government. It was timed in such a way as to ensure a minimum level of public debate, coming as it does just after the Budget and just before Christmas, with legislation to be rushed through in January. This scheming manner in forcing through this measure fully reveals once again the anti-democratic nature of this Government.
What is even more galling is that this insidious scheme is a deliberate policy choice on the part of the Government to forgo collective provision for elderly people through the taxation system in favour of such individualised financial penalisation of the most vulnerable members of society.
It comes, of course, just after the Government announced in the Budget, at PD insistence, that the top rate of tax be reduced to 41 per cent from 42 per cent, a reduction incidentally which was rejected by people in polls carried out before the Budget. That extra 1 per cent of tax, which no doubt will be frittered away on spa treatments, foreign holidays and SUVs by those who already have enough money, could have easily provided the extra revenue which this new measure will bring in, which at the Department's own reckoning will be €178 million in 2010.
The implications of this are clear: the Celtic Tiger is to be ruled by the law of the jungle, where it's every man and woman for themselves and God help those on the bottom of the heap. The only groups that will benefit from this measure will be the State, the thoroughly discredited private nursing home sector (Leas Cross being only the tip of the iceberg), estate agents, developers and solicitors.
This Government has consistently betrayed the principles upon which this State was conceived by our founders in 1916. Pearse and Connolly will be turning in their graves at the even lower depths of cynicism and greed behind this measure. The feeble gestures from the opposition show even more starkly that in any substantive issue Labour and Fine Gael are no different from Fianna Fáil and the PDs. Contrast the meek protests from the opposition over this measure with the ridiculous posturing over the Taoiseach's "whip rounds" back in the 1990s. - Is mise,
Dr BARRY CANNON, Park Terrace, Dublin 8.
Madam, - With reference to the proposals on elderly care, may I make a brief point that seems to be overlooked by those who expressed their dismay that some elderly patients may need to fund their care through a taxation on their estate after death?
The phenomenal rise is property values, especially in the last decade, has represented a huge effective transfer of wealth from the young and asset-poor to the old and asset-rich. This is wealth that was not created by any amount of "scrimping or saving", but by sheer good fortune. There is a direct correlation between the number of young families struggling to afford a home and repayments on a mortgage and how well many have done from the property bonanza. Personally, I don't find it unreasonable that those with the resources to pay for their care through good fortune should do so, especially when payment is deferred until after their need for care has ceased.
Surely it is not a "just society" that would allow the asset-poor to pay for the care of the asset-rich twice-over? - Yours, etc,
COLIN R. COOPER, The Broadway, London.
Madam, - Could I say sorry to the Minister for Health and Children for being a nuisance. After 50 years of working and paying taxes, mostly at the highest rate, I had the nerve to retire. Now I find that the Minister wants to make me pay for that. I worked all my working life. My late wife worked all her life and now my four children are all working but that is not enough for our Minister. Would I be right in thinking she wants it all. Shame on you Minister. - Yours, etc,
OMAR MacEOGHAIN, Rush, Co Dublin.