Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I heard the Taoiseach's responses earlier on the nursing home charges scandal. He defended the strategy that has been pursued by successive governments not to give people what they should be entitled to in respect of the huge outlays they have for nursing home charges. He defended that position and said the Government has never conceded the obligation to pay these charges. If that was the case, why did the Government need a legal strategy at all? Why did it have to settle with people? Why was there a memo stating that we had better keep these settlements quiet in case other people become aware that they would have a legal case against the Government for the refund of nursing home fees they had paid?

Does this scandal not highlight the systematic policy on the part of a Government that is willing to give €64 billion to banks and bondholders and do anything to resist taxes on the rich such as the proposed wealth tax while denying ordinary, often very vulnerable, people who have suffered at the hands of or been let down by the State, whether it is the Brigid McCole case, CervicalCheck, the nursing home fees scandal or the mother and baby homes redress scheme we will discuss later where tens of thousands of people will be denied redress they should have as survivors of these homes, because the Government is penny pinching and creating arbitrary criteria to deny them the things they deserve to protect the interests of the wealthy?

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