Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I will comment on that very briefly as I am not going to get involved in this to any greater extent. The statistics I have given in terms of the 9,000 are from the HSE and relate to the nursing homes support scheme. They are on foot of a reply to a parliamentary question. I believe many older people and their families do not want to rent out their properties. That is fair enough. That is their own decision. It is very hard to know what the impact will be until one does something. However, the fundamental issue is that the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection has a very equitable, fair and defensible system of calculating income but in the nursing homes support scheme we are saying that if one has a particular type of income, then one pays for it three times. That is wrong. That is inequitable. It is immoral and needs to be changed. All I am asking the Department to do is to look back over what I have said this morning, look at the legislation in the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, and bring a bit of fairness into the fair deal scheme.