Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I mentioned, the Attorney General has been asked to prepare a report on the matter for Cabinet next week and that report will be published. There will also be statements in the Dáil next week. As I think the Deputy acknowledged on the radio this morning, it is reasonable that Ministers should have a bit of time to put all of the documents together because this goes back a long way. There have been no new cases in over ten years, although many have been settled more recently. As the Deputy suggested earlier, this is something I am sure the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health will want to look into.

As I mentioned in terms of my own role, I was Minister for Health from 2014 to 2016, which is six to eight years ago. I must have been briefed on the matter. Ministers before and after me were briefed, as were the junior Ministers, but I cannot tell the Deputy when or by whom, in what depth or in what detail or whether it was written or verbal. Hopefully, I will be able to find that out when documents are gone through in the Department of Health.

The policy and strategy were derived and agreed prior to me becoming Minister for Health. I do not specifically know if I was asked to sign off on continuing them but, as I said, if I was asked, I would have done so because this is a sound policy approach and a legitimate legal strategy by government. I would ask what the alternative was to this policy approach and legal strategy. The alternative would have been to open up the scheme to people who had attended private nursing homes, even though we did not believe they had a legal entitlement to any refunds. That would not have been right. Governments have a duty to protect the taxpayer. They also have a duty to protect the health budget and make sure it is spent on healthcare and not on refunds. We also have a duty to be fair to people and to be just, and I acknowledge that. It is very clear, however, that the State had strong defences in regard to this and that people who had medical cards, just as now, are not entitled to refunds for private care.

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