Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for bringing forward the Bill, which I very much welcome. I also join in paying tribute to all those working in nursing homes, the staff, care assistants, the people who provide the meals and the management in all the homes across the country. It has been a very difficult 18 months for everyone. The current scheme provides that 80% of the person's income goes towards nursing home cost. If they are the owner of a dwelling house, it is 7.5% per annum for a maximum of three years, so the maximum that can be taken when a person has a dwelling house is 22.5% over that three years, if they survive for that period. The same cap does not apply to businesses and to farms and, therefore, I very much welcome the proposed change in the Bill which was clearly set out in the review published in 2015.

Sometimes the State is slow to act on the changes required. I can go back to a ward of court case in 1976 called Maud McInerney in the Supreme Court where the court decided that nursing home care came under the definition of "medical care". Therefore, anyone with a medical card was technically entitled to free nursing home care. It took a further 28 years before the Department of Health and the health boards reacted. They continued to deduct 80% of pensions even though there was no proper regulation or legislation to allow them to do so. It is only when a number of us in the legal profession challenged it in 2004 that suddenly changes were made. It should not have taken 28 years for a proper structure to be put in place. Until the time of the fair deal scheme, it was hit and miss whether someone got a bed in a public nursing home or had support if he or she was in a private nursing home. It was interesting how, in 2004, emergency legislation was rushed through in three days which tried to make nursing home charges retrospective. The then President, Mary McAleese, referred it to the Supreme Court and, in February 2005, it found it unconstitutional. That meant it was back to the drawing board and a refund of more than €400 million to people who had been charged in nursing homes over previous years. This raises the question of why it takes us so long to bring about necessary change. I very much welcome what occurred after 2004 and the introduction of the fair deal scheme. What was done was very fair and brought about the necessary changes except for those who were farmers or in business.

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The necessary change was not made for them. I recently encountered the case of a man who had paid more than €480,000 in nursing home charges, which is a substantial amount, over ten years before he died because he was not in the fair deal scheme.

Let me address the provisions of the Bill, particularly section 3 and the circumstances that arise when a farm is transferred and the transferor needs nursing home care within five years of the transfer. If a son or daughter to whom a farm is transferred borrows substantially to invest in it and his or her parent ends up in a nursing home, the question of how to service the debt arises when the debt is registered against the farm at a later date. We must ensure that the interest rate is not above the current bank interest rate. This needs to be examined carefully.

I am sure every Member has come across very difficult cases. I have had a case involving a son who had a farm transferred to him and who had it in his possession for more than five years. His father died and then he was killed tragically himself in an accident but had no will made. The farm reverted to the mother, who ended up in a nursing home. A question arose over the entitlement to take the farm into account in determining what should be paid to the nursing home. Those are very genuine circumstances. I came across the case of a man who died and left his farm to his son and mother. The mother ended up in a nursing home but the farm was not yielding a sufficient income to pay the nursing home charges. Fifty percent of the value of the farm was taken into account in calculating the charges. These are very genuine cases. We need to be careful when putting in place the regulations. While I very much welcome the three-year cap, a valuation does not necessarily identify whether there is sufficient income to service the debts. We need to be careful about this.

On nursing home care and responding to the changes needed, we all want to develop home care. In rural areas, there are major challenges in getting people to give care. We do not have a sufficient number of people who can provide the type of home care in question. We need to determine how we can encourage more people to provide the service and obtain the necessary training and skills. That is the biggest challenge we will face in the next ten years. The number aged over 65 is currently 720,000. By 2030, there will be 1 million. We need to increase the number of people who can provide home care immediately if we want to keep as many people in their own homes for as long as they want to stay in them.

I thank the Minister of State for introducing this legislation. I look forward to working with her to have it passed and implemented at an early date.

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