James Breen (Clare, Independent)

I intend to hold on to it.

The delay in bringing this Bill before the House is outrageous. The Bill seeks to address a wrong that was perpetrated on one of the most vulnerable sections of the community and who deserved a quicker response. As other speakers have pointed out, if the Minister for Health and Children's predecessor, Deputy Martin, had read the memos from his staff on the illegality of nursing home charges, we might not have had to wait so long. However, given that Deputy's habit of seeking a report or inquiry on everything that came his way, we might have had to wait even longer. It is more than 14 months since the Supreme Court deemed the Minister, Deputy Harney's Bill to be unconstitutional. It was a shameful attempt to legalise blatant fraud. Since then, the introduction of this Bill has been deferred from one quarter to another. It has been a source of deep embarrassment to all Members of the House since then that any query we received asking when repayments might be made could only be answered with uncertainty due to the foostering and bumbling of the Tánaiste in trying to put a repayments mechanism in place. There is now supposed to be a user-friendly, uncomplicated process which is independent, transparent and through which swift repayment will be made to all those due repayments since 9 December 1998. I hope it will do exactly what it says on the tin.

The need for an independent and overseeing body for the administration of the repayments process and management of the private property accounts should be explained to the House, considering there are Departments such as the Department of Social and Family Affairs which pays millions of euro every week in benefits. Why is there a need to pay an outside agency to take charge of the repayments?

Similarly wasteful has been the tendering process for a body to make these repayments. The Health Service Executive so much enjoyed the process the first time that they did it twice. If ever there was an illustration of the lack of public confidence in the Department of Health and Children, it was that the first tendering process could not attract one suitable company willing to be associated with this shambolic administration.

This repayment process will be audited by the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General. He should intervene now and insist that the repayments be made by existing Departments which are already audited by his office and so save the taxpayer enormous expense. Although the House has debated the overcharging by nursing homes and the Travers report dealt with the history of the levying of those charges, the simple fact remains that except for Mr. Michael Kelly, a senior civil servant who was far from being solely or totally to blame, no one has been held responsible for not taking action on the overcharging when notified of it. There is anecdotal evidence that when challenged about the legality of the charges in individual cases, some health boards simply stopped charging those individuals. The practice was highlighted in the annual reports of the Office of the Ombudsman in 1989, 1992, 2001 and 2003, yet no action was taken.

Due consideration should be given to those who are not competent to make a claim which is unfortunately the case in a substantial percentage of those entitled to make a claim. The Minister should ensure that workshops staffed by employees of the health service visit the various nursing homes and ensure that all those who are entitled to repayments make a claim.

In my constituency a share of patients live in St. Joseph's in Raheen and in Ennistymon and Kilrush geriatric hospitals. I have visited those hospitals, some of which are of a very high standard. The patients enjoy great care but I can tell the Minister of State, Deputy Seán Power, that the staff work in atrocious conditions.

I strongly urge the Minister to set up visiting workshops. A faceless telephone helpline is useless in these circumstances. It is time for the Government to face up to the health care needs of the elderly. A comprehensive report to tackle the care needs of our elderly is urgently needed. This needs to be addressed positively with elderly care specialists and support teams based in the community, and we need to put an end to the statement that caring for the elderly is increasingly problematic in the health system, which merely promotes ageism in society.

Given the delay in bringing this Bill before the House, the length of time the practice of illegally collecting the charges continued, and that no claims prior to 9 December 1998 can be made, it would have been appropriate that the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, would at least have included in the Bill a deadline by which repayment claims received would have been paid, but even this consideration to the elderly in the community was beyond her.

Let me deal with a statement made in this House last night, that patients, before being discharged into the community, are seen by a doctor and then by an occupational therapist, and then when they are discharged they are visited in their homes by an occupational therapist. Is the Minister of State, Deputy Seán Power, aware that one must wait six months to get an occupational therapist in County Clare, unless one is able to pay up front?

Subvention is another matter. A lady whose mother is in a nursing home came into my office the other day. On applying for subvention the health board wanted her to sell the family home in order that her mother could remain in care. Would anyone in this House today like to see their family home sold? Often the family homes and farms such people own are part of family settlements. The health board will demand that those homes be sold to keep a loved one in care. A generous subvention should be given and home help made available on a regular basis, which is not the case.

People looking for home help in my county cannot get it. In west Clare an elderly man who needed home help in January last was told to apply again in April when the money became available.

This is the Government which tells us we have a great health system on which it has spent millions. It has squandered, not spent, millions on it. A root and branch analysis of the health boards was never undertaken. The Government commissioned various reports such as the Hanly report. Currently in the mid-west it is conducting a survey of what we need in our hospitals. This is another survey costing more money. The Government can dish out money for electronic voting machines, to the horse racing industry and to the GAA. Being a true GAA man myself, I welcome the latter spending. However, the people who need the money are the elderly in this society and the Government is not giving it.

I visited a geriatric home in my county last week and met the loved ones of two people in that home who are suffering from the MRSA super bug. One of those patients was in a semi-private ward and the other was in a public ward. When I asked the nurse in charge why those people suffering from this deadly MRSA bug were in public and semi-private wards I was told that they could not put them into a private ward because they did not have one. When I stated that nurses going out for lunch should change out of their uniforms, a nurse came to me and said there was nowhere for them to change unless they did so in the ladies' toilet because there was no staff room. That is the position in St. Joseph's Hospital in Ennis. The Government can proudly state that this is the health service and we are spending money. We are not spending it; we are squandering it.

I want the Minister of State, Deputy Seán Power, to visit Ennis again. I stated yesterday evening that the accident and emergency department in Ennis hospital was so crowded a few weeks ago that patients were put in the reception area and no fire or safety measures were in place for the vulnerable people concerned who were unable to care for themselves. Will the Minister of State undertake to come back to visit and see for himself the institutions in Clare, especially the geriatric homes, and compliment the doctors, nurses and staff who give an excellent service in atrociously poor conditions

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