Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 5, line 36, to delete “7.5 per cent” and substitute “5 per cent”.

My amendments seek to delete the Minister's proposal to increase the asset contribution to 7.5% and retain the current position of 5%. I do this with some reluctance. An increase from 5% to 7.5% is a 50% increase on the calculable asset value of the recipient of the fair deal scheme. It is very instructive that the Government, and in particular Fine Gael, has set its face against any increase in income tax. It makes almost a high moral position of this in repeated statements and assurances from the Taoiseach and others in Fine Gael that it will not contemplate any increase in income tax for the highest paid in the State.

I cannot refer to Fine Gael alone because whatever about the position of the Labour Party on higher levels of income tax for the highest paid or a wealth tax, when it comes to squeezing more money out of older peoples' pockets there is no reluctance whatsoever. An increase from 5% to 7.5% is what this amounts to. Many of the citizens concerned - we should remind ourselves of this fact - have spent their working lives paying significant income tax to the Exchequer. They or their spouses paid taxes over many years at a time when low and middle income PAYE workers bore a hugely excessive burden of the cost of providing for the services of the State.

When people who worked for the greater part of their lives, or their dependent surviving spouses, in later life seek help from the State, they are asked to shoulder a further burden having contributed to services throughout decades of their lives. This goes to the heart of what is wrong with the Bill and the original Nursing Homes Support Scheme Bill. Despite Government claims that it is going in the opposite direction, the fact of the matter is that it is moving us away from universal entitlement to hospital and residential care. That is no longer the case and has not been for some considerable time.

Such charges post one's death do not fit with a universal entitlement to hospital and residential care. As we have seen, care is being contracted out and patients are made to pay, a situation which is continuing. Instances of it have been demonstrated in terms of the intent of the Government, as I said earlier, in the recent comments of the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch.

We constantly hear the refrain about money following the patient but in this instance, and given what is involved in section 7 of the Bill, what we are actually looking at is more money being taken from the patient who may be old, infirm and no longer able to live independently. Once again we are taking more from a person's net worth. That is completely and absolutely wrong.

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