Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone present for making themselves available for dealing with this issue. First, I will make a declaration that I was wearing a different cap in 2004, in that I acted in a legal capacity against both the health boards and the Department of Health. It is important I declare that in respect of these nursing home claims. As I said to the Chair in a private meeting last week, I was seeking legal advice as to whether I could participate. I received legal advice internally here and have been advised that I can participate and ask questions regarding this matter.

I will open by saying the concern I have is about the delay in the Department dealing with issues. The Ombudsman published a report in 2001 dealing with nursing home charges. In fact we can go back as far as 1976 to the Maud McInerney case, where the Supreme Court decided that nursing home care came under the definition of medical care. Yet going forward to 2000, no action had been taken by the Department and in October 2004, my legal office identified clients who were in both public and private nursing homes and who were being charged. My legal office and another legal office commenced a series of correspondence and by December 2004, more than 50 letters had been written both to the health board and the Department of Health but still no action was taken. My colleague applied to the High Court for a judicial review on the second week of December. The High Court judge held we had not given sufficient time to the health board or to the Department of Health and decided to not give consent for the judicial review to go forward. The following day, the Department announced that all public nursing home charges were to stop and at the same time, a Bill was published to try to regularise the issue, while also making sure that anyone who had charges deducted previously could not reclaim the funds. That Bill went through the Dáil and Seanad, the President refused to sign it and sent it to the Supreme Court. We continued with our High Court proceeding and it led from there as regards the decision to put in place the repayments for the public nursing home charges. More than €450 million was repaid. There was one bit of satisfaction that there were two small legal practices taking on the State where the State was sitting idly by in not doing something about an issue that was within the knowledge of the Department for quite some time.

My question in relation to this. Looking at it now, why does it take so long for a Department, and this has since happened in other issues, to come to a decision about where something is hovering around and it takes until such time as there is a legal challenge before action is taken? Are there other issues out there that we are not aware of but that the Department is aware of and on which it is still delaying the making of decisions?