Dan Neville (Limerick West, Fine Gael)

Our experience is that the time limit is necessary. A year and eight months has passed since it was determined that money was illegally deducted from people in long-stay nursing homes and institutions. We are asking that a determination of a person's eligibility is made as soon as reasonably possible after an application has been received but no later than 28 days. If the Minister of State were to read the amendment, he would see that we are giving the Government 28 days. The amendment would also require payments to be made within a further 28 days.

We want to give a strong signal. Delays have occurred and people who were eligible for payments when this issue was exposed have since died. The tardiness of and approach by the Government to this matter from the outset does not instil us with confidence that payments will be made as quickly as possible. There is concern that the attitude will be one of how to refuse payment rather than how to facilitate it. This negative attitude would lead to long delays in payments, which would result in stress among the elderly, who may not fully comprehend what is happening but know that money is coming to them, and stress on the families of people in institutions who must answer those family members' questions about what happened. Two 28-day periods is not an unreasonable time within which to make payments. We do not trust the Government to do it.

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