Care home fee plan delayed

by Eilish O’Regan RESIDENTS of private nursing homes facing high fees will have to wait until next year before they can avail of the Government’s delayed Fair Deal scheme allowing for a new form of payment, it emerged yesterday. Health Minister Mary Harney confirmed that it will now be 2009 before the scheme will be in place although a Bill setting out the new scheme will come before the Oireachtas shortly. The Fair Deal scheme was originally supposed to be in operation from January 2008 and would have allowed residents of private nursing homes to have the cost of their care, which can amount to around EUR50,000 a year, claimed from their estates after death. But legal difficulties held it up and EUR110m allocated for the scheme this year had to be diverted to other health services instead. Those legal difficulties have been resolved and the measure will be debated in the Dail before Christmas. Burgling Labour TD Kathleen Lynch yesterday accused the Government of “burgling” money set aside for the scheme this year. She said: “The Government earmarked EUR110m in Budget 2008 to be spent on the Fair Deal scheme. “They never got their act together to put the legislation in place to give effect to the scheme, so the allocation of the money went into abeyance.” “It is Labour’s contention that the money allocated should be Spent on the care of the elderly, for whom it was intended, rather “than on being spirited away to be spent on some completely unrelated project,” said the Cork TD, who obtained the information after tabling a parliamentary question. “The reply I got was shocking. Labour has argued on a number of occasions that the money should be used to ease the pressure on families who were quite reasonably expecting that the scheme would be fully in place at this stage. “These are people who have had to face significant nursing home bills, some of which have increased dramatically in recent times.” “It is Labour’s contention that the money allocated should be spent on the care of the elderly, for whom it was intended, rather than on being spirited away to be spent on some completely unrelated project somewhere or other,” she added. “The reply I got, indicating what has happened to that money, was shocking. “Labour has argued on a number of occasions that the money should be used to ease the pressure on families who were quite reasonably expecting that the scheme would be fully in place at this stage. “These are people who have had to face significant nursing home bills, some of which have increased dramatically in recent times. Ms Lynch said a massive portion of the EUR110m had ended up “disappearing into the HSE black hole” and was “simply swallowed up”. She accused Ms Harney of becoming the “ultimate serial procrastinator in this matter, and given her failure, since 2006 when it was first announced, to actually bring this scheme to fruition, it is hard not to conclude that the political will’ to bring it about, has completely evaporated.” Plight She said: “In the meantime the plight of families, who have been put to the pin of their collar as a result of her inaction, has been shamefully ignored.” “Instead what has happened is that just EUR13m of the EUR110m has been spent on the provision of contract beds. “An additional EUR12m has been spent on meeting costs associated with nursing home subventions and existing contract beds, which is another way of saying that it disappeared into the HSE black hole. “The remainder will be allocated ‘to meet certain other additional costs’-facing the health services this year, which, again, means that it will simply be swallowed up by the HSE,” she added. Nursing Homes Ireland has called for the reallocation of EUR85m of the -money for enhanced subventions to support who are under financial strain in meeting the fees. The organisation’s chief executive, Tadhg Daly, said: “There are families of residents who have taken out bank loans on the understanding that Fair Deal would be implemented last January and are getting into further debt as the delays continue.”