Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

Last week the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children put through the Health (Nursing Homes) (Amendment) Bill 2006, which permits nursing homes to cause clients to sell their family home. He said he had no flexibility on this and he was doing so on the instruction of the Cabinet and on the advice of the Attorney General. There is now statutory underpinning to force the sale of the family home if one's parent is in a nursing home. Yesterday, the Minister for Health and Children announced a new scheme, which provides for a charge to be levied against the family home. It is not clear whether the senior and junior Ministers are ad idem on this or whether the junior Minister was being hanged out to dry or where we stand, but there is no clarity about it.

The scheme the Minister announced contains a number of fundamental changes. For example, nobody can be referred to a nursing home unless he or she has been medically assessed. In the normal course of events, having been medically assessed, one can be referred to an acute hospital or a nursing home. If one is referred to an acute hospital, there is no facility to compel the sale of the family home or to make a charge against it, but there is if one is referred to a nursing home. Why is the family home only included for the purposes of the means test because a person is old? Will the Taoiseach explain to the House why such a distinction is made between one type of medical institution and another? One may not enter a nursing home until one has been medically assessed, so what happens to the rest of our older people? Are they left alone to bear the entire cost of private residential care or will the Taoiseach tell me they will be eligible for home care packages? What home care packages will these people be eligible for and where are they?

In terms of the charge that can be levied, where does the carer left in the family home stand while the person being cared for is in a nursing home? What is to stop people transferring assets when so advised? Why should a person, because he or she is old, live in fear of remortgaging or selling his or her house? Why did the Government enact a law last week permitting the sale of the family home if it is not the intention to resort to that law at some stage? Some of the Taoiseach's backbenchers do not have time to follow every piece of legislation that passes through the House and the legacy being left by the Progressive Democrats is only beginning to dawn on them. The Taoiseach should now perform the sort of U-turn he has done on a number of issues recently, before old people are caused greater anxiety by the situation the Government has created.

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