Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The traffic in Dublin nearly had me beaten. I welcome the Bill. There is one issue I would like the Minister of State to clarify. My office has been onto her's about it already. Will people who have been in nursing homes for three to five years so far be covered under the three-year rule straight away when the legislation comes in? Going by what she has said, they will have to be there three years starting now. That is a pity because many people in farming and business are financially stretched at the moment and their next of kin are paying large amounts for nursing homes.

This is a progressive step forward. Rural Deputies from all sides have been lobbying for this change for the past four or five years. It is welcome because it will take pressure off families down the road. We have to remember that a business or a farm is like a torch for people to hand on. The situation that had evolved was that someone could have a house worth €1 million somewhere and once the three years were up it would be gone out the window. However, if that person had a farm or a business, the rate was 7% a year and that kept going for whatever length of time. It is great that those people were living a good while but the longer they lived another 7% was defrayed and the State would end up owning the farm or the business. I ask the Minister of State to look again at people who have been in homes for the past three years. People are paying for their loved ones for eight or ten years and that has put a fair amount of financial pressure on them. Farming or running a business is not the simplest thing in the world at the best of times and it puts big financial pressure on people but it also keeps them in their community and keeps them in employment.

The other issue I would like the Minister of State to look at, and she probably will because we were on a group regarding to it previously, is helping local communities to keep a nucleus of people from the area in one-bedroom or two-bedroom chalets. That way, one carer or nurse could call to them and they would stay in their communities for as long as possible. We are well aware that it would not work for everybody but it might help people with Alzheimer's and so on, and new technologies could be used to keep them safe and in the community.

We also need to look at the issue of carers and the hours and hours that sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles spend looking after their loved ones in houses around this country. I have seen people working in Dublin give up their jobs to go down the country to look after their mother or father, and because they had a house here in Dublin, they had to get it assessed and all that craic. They get damn all, to be quite frank about it. It would be helpful if we could look at that situation. I welcome the Bill and I know the Minister of State had a personal interest in it. I ask her to look at the issues I talked about.

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