With regard to the nursing homes issue and the disability allowance, how they evolved was of an historic nature. The fundamental problem was that the public policy was transparent from the outset in respect of disability allowance and nursing home payments, going right back to the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Public policy was very transparent in respect of nursing homes. People paid a contribution and so forth. This was by virtue of regulations that had been put into place. Many decades later it transpired that those regulations were not consistent with the primary Act. That was the fundamental flaw. At that time the Government of the day took a decision to retrospectively pay back in a repayment scheme the payments taken from those availing of public nursing homes.

With regard to the disabled person's maintenance allowance, a similar situation pertained in respect of the public policy being very transparent. That allowance was introduced in the first instance to provide for people who were on very low incomes when living independently. Once they went into residential care those payments were discontinued. This carried on for quite a long period and was publicly transparent. A case then emerged. It was the then Minister, the late Seamus Brennan, during the Government to which the Deputy referred, who corrected it. He took the decision that residents would be allowed to retain their domiciliary care allowance in a residential setting or a hospital. This was eventually rectified in the 2000s. By the way, it is something that has not been rectified in Northern Ireland. To this day, someone in a hospital or residential care in Northern Ireland for longer than four weeks gets a reduction. This was a public policy issue. The problem was that again the secondary legislation was wrongly drafted and inconsistent with the primary Act of 1970.

Generally, a Government habitually gets updated, perhaps every six months, on what are called sensitive litigation cases or cases of major litigation. There could be 30 cases at any one time to which the Government is alerted. That list is culled from a further list of approximately 200 cases of litigation against the State in the Office of the Attorney General. I refer the Deputy to the fact that 20 years ago the Government established the State Claims Agency and took medical negligence and personal injuries cases out of the realm of the political arena. The State Claims Agency on behalf of the State decides, rightly or wrongly or insensitively or sensitively, the determination of how the State defends various cases.

The net point in respect of this is that the focus of that Government was to improve substantially disability allowance payments in the 2000s and to use the resources for that generation. That call will always be made. In the past two and a half years, the Government has committed to approximately €6 billion in retrospective payments in three or four areas. Issues will arise and calls have to be made in respect of the needs of the current and future generations in terms of the allocation of resources. There will be good times and bad for public finances, and economies are cyclical. How one allocates these resources is a fundamental issue. At any one time there can be up to 30 sensitive cases before the Government. Ultimately, the Oireachtas and the Government of the day have to make decisions in this respect and not all of them are palatable or in any way desirable.

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