Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

Legislation will be needed to deal with some elements of the nursing home charges issue. It is intended to have that legislation passed by the Houses of the Oireachtas by the end of this session. The legislation, if required, will deal with the issue of ensuring that the moneys to be paid back will not be used to prevent people getting social welfare entitlements. In other words, it will not be used for the purposes of means testing people, which would be very unreasonable. This may be done through the proposed legislation or there may be another mechanism for doing so. The issue of private nursing homes is separate. The proposed Bill will provide for the repayment of those in public institutions. Litigation is pending regarding the private nursing home issue, which will be vigorously defended by the State. I believe everybody would accept we could not possibly pay for everybody in a private nursing home.

Last night I said the Government was committed to ensuring BreastCheck was rolled out in Cork and Galway and in place by 2007. One would wish that population screening programmes could be carried out for the whole country at once. Unfortunately that is not possible. In every other country we reviewed this has been done on a phased roll-out basis, which is happening in this case. The commitment is to have it in place by 2007.

The Minister for Transport advises me that he is not certain when he will have the Dublin Airport Authority's report. Clearly any discussion that might take place in the House should be discussed by the Whips.

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