Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I fully support the motion on the fair deal scheme. It is important, particularly for small farmers and small businesspeople, the self-employed who are being hit with unfair assessments on their income and asset values, in particular when assessed for the nursing home support scheme. The 7.5% cap per year on the asset value is unfair and creates a very serious distinction that has a cooling effect on families deciding whether to put their loved ones that might require care into a nursing home. When that is combined with the lack of home care packages and the availability of home care packages across the country, it puts those families in a really difficult situation.

There is no doubt that there are farmers who are putting themselves at serious financial risk by trying to meet the cost rather than having the nursing home support scheme pick it up by putting their loved ones into it. The obsession the Government has with assessing asset values, particularly for people who may have an asset that has substantial value but can derive very little income from it, is problematic. It is not only in the nursing home support scheme, but also the social welfare system. It is a serious problem. If one takes, for example, a farm that could be valued at €1 million, the income from it might only be €24,000 a year. That is the crux of the problem. A far fairer system would be to assess the income derived from the asset rather than putting the value on the asset itself. Of course, that has a budgetary implication for the Government and that is the reason why it has not considered this in the past. It would be a far fairer system and one that could operate very easily and effectively. Farmers and small businesspeople would be preparing accounts and making returns, so the income could be assessed and seen. There may be a temptation to try to hide assets because they are going to have an impact on the ability to pay, whereas on incomes and returns to the Revenue, that situation would not arise and income could be assessed easily.

We have the same situation in the social welfare system, where somebody may own a house that has perhaps belonged to his or her parents, and when that person goes to access social welfare payments, the asset value of that property is assessed and a means is attributed to it which bears no relation to the means that can be generated from the rental income, for example, of that house. There could be somebody with a house with a value of €80,000 given a means of €200 a week from it, while in the rental market in that area, one might be lucky to get €80 or €90 a week for the rental of that property. That is where this asset value assessment comes from. It comes from the social welfare system and it has been knitted into the nursing home support scheme. That is the crux of the problem.

The motion calls for the interdepartmental working group report to be published. It will be interesting to see when it is published how the Government is going to look at treatment of assets. Unless there is a system where the income arising from the asset is assessed rather than the asset value itself, there will always be unfairness in the system and that is the crux of the problem.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak about the payments from the nursing home support scheme to nursing homes, particularly community nursing facilities, because the disparity between what they will pay, for example, in Donegal and in Dublin, is causing real problems, particularly for community-owned facilities. I am thinking of Áras Ghaoth Dobhair in west Donegal, a community-owned facility where the community was facilitated by the HSE in establishing the facility many years ago. The community never envisaged that it would still be running the facility at this stage, almost 15 years on. The amount of income that they can get from the nursing home support scheme is restrictive and leaves them constantly in a financially precarious situation where every couple of years there is a financial crisis and the sustainability of the facility is always put in question. It is an important facility because there is no easily accessible public facility and there is no interest from the private sector in providing facilities in that area. This is more marked in rural areas as well because there is no private business for nursing homes. Everyone is dependent on the nursing home support scheme whereas in the larger urban areas there may be possible private business available for the nursing homes from which they can supplement their income.

In debating nursing homes and the nursing home support scheme, I must mentioned there is also a need to rapidly roll out a construction programme for public facilities across the country because we are heading into a crisis. With the demographic changes, the number of beds required will probably more than double in the next ten years and we need to see those community facilities built and developed as well. Such facilities are integral, particularly in Donegal. The community nursing homes and community hospitals are an integral part of the working of Letterkenny University Hospital where the system operates so that patients are moved quickly out from the university hospital to the community hospitals, freeing up beds and keeping the system working. We must address that building programme as a matter of urgency as well.

In the context of the motion, moving to a system where the income derived from the asset is assessed rather than the asset value is the only way we will have a fair system that people can avail of.

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