Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

For more than 30 years, the State and successive governments have ripped off hundreds and thousands of elderly citizens and their families by unlawfully charging them for nursing home care. Despite consistent, repeated legal advice that those charges were illegal, the Government continued to force vulnerable people to pay up. This created real financial hardship and pushed many into poverty as they struggled to afford the charges.

At the weekend, we discovered in the Mail on Sundaythat successive governments to this very day operate a secret, calculated legal strategy to stop those who are illegally charged from getting their money back. That was last night confirmed by a Government spokesperson. Instead of the State and the Government owning up to this horrendous treatment of elderly citizens, successive governments have pursued a heartless legal and political strategy, one designed by governments to draw out cases they knew they could not win, to exhaust people's ability to fund their legal challenges and then to settle for significantly reduced awards, all the while keeping things hush-hush. Governments did this knowing it would hit the least well-off families the hardest. We are talking about people forced to work beyond retirement to pay for their parents' nursing home fees. We are talking about pensioners left with a weekly pittance on which to live after paying the charges for loved ones' care. We are talking about families fearing they would go without food, clothes and the basic necessities after forking out these fees. Life savings and pensions have been wiped out, homes sold and elderly people pushed to the breadline, all in a desperate scramble to pay charges that were illegal and the Government knew to be illegal. Then there is the biggest scandal of all - a carefully designed, reviewed plan to prevent these people from getting their money back. That is the reality of this scandal, yet government after government persisted.

The Taoiseach has claimed this is complex. There is nothing complex about the Government ripping off elderly people. There is nothing complex about devising a legal and political strategy to cover your tracks. The truth is that this heartless strategy has been agreed and renewed by every Government and Minister for Health, including the Taoiseach, up to the present day.

Yesterday, the Taoiseach went on the radio. He claimed he was never party to devising or agreeing this legal strategy and tried to distance himself from it, but that is not true. A memo from 5 May 2016, also published, states clearly that the strategy was agreed and overseen by the Minister, which was the current Taoiseach. Is that not the case? Not alone did he know about it, but his colleagues, the Minister, Deputy Harris, the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and the now Tánaiste, Deputy Micheál Martin, knew about it. Let us not play games.

Dúirt an Taoiseach nár aontaigh sé leis an straitéis seo. É sin ráite, is léir gur lean gach Aire Sláinte, le blianta beaga anuas, an Teachta Varadkar san áireamh, leis an straitéis seo chun bac a chur ar na daoine sin a gcuid airgid a fháil ar ais.

Does the Taoiseach still claim he knew nothing of this strategy? Does he still claim that colleagues in government knew nothing of it? It is clear to me that all documentation and correspondence relating to this secret legal strategy must now be published. Will the Taoiseach commit to that?

See this speech in context