Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to raise this extremely important issue in the House even for only two and a half minutes. I was shocked when I got a phone call recently from the relative of a 99 year old in a nursing home in County Cavan who has been asked to pay the increased charges that the nursing home wants from 1 January this year because the Minister and the HSE have decided that no further increases would be allowed under the subvention system. This is supposed to be because the fair deal — or fairytale deal — that has been talked about has never been delivered. In December 2006 it was first hinted that there would be a new fair deal for nursing home charges. The details of that scheme were announced in February 2007 and we were advised that it would be brought through the Cabinet, Dáil and Seanad and be in place for operation on 1 January 2008. However, as of today we have not seen sight of that Bill and the Minister has refused to allow the subvention offices to deal in a sympathetic and realistic way with such situations. This is not the only case — I have several other letters. I welcome the fact that the Minister of State, Deputy Hoctor, is here as the matter relates to the elderly.

After nine years in a nursing home being covered by the pension and subvention, how can I say to this lady or her family that suddenly she must find the money, at the same time as the Minister has taken an increase of €35,000 for herself? I accept that does not apply to the Minister of State. I refer to the Minister, Deputy Harney.

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