Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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5. To ask the Taoiseach if he is intending to establish new Cabinet subcommittees. [3075/23]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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6. To ask the Taoiseach if he is intending to establish new Cabinet subcommittees. [3078/23]

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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7. To ask the Taoiseach if he is intending to establish new Cabinet subcommittees. [4447/23]

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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8. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet Committee on Government Co-ordination will next meet. [4087/23]

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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9. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet Committee on Government Co-ordination will next meet. [4379/23]

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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35. To ask the Taoiseach if he is intending to establish new Cabinet subcommittees. [4380/23]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions 5 to 9, inclusive, and 35 together.

The Government has established ten Cabinet committees in the following areas: Brexit and Northern Ireland; children and education; economy and investment; environment and climate change; EU and international affairs; Government co-ordination; health; housing; humanitarian response to Ukraine; and social affairs and public services. I am a member of all the committees along with the Tánaiste and the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications. In addition to the membership of the committees, other Ministers and Ministers of State may attend meetings as required.

The Government co-ordination committee has met twice since the formation of the new Government and is scheduled to meet again on 13 February. The Cabinet committee on housing met on 30 January and the committee on humanitarian response to Ukraine met on 31 January. The Cabinet committee on health is scheduled to meet on 13 February and the committee on the economy and investment, which is chaired by the Tánaiste, is scheduled to meet on 16 February. Other committees will meet in the coming weeks.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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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?

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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Yesterday it was elderly people in nursing homes while today it is people with disabilities living in institutional care centres - another day, another scandal involving the conscious abuse of State power to defraud the most vulnerable people. Rather than caring for these people as the State is legally obliged to, a decision was repeatedly taken at the highest level to rip them off.

The Taoiseach said earlier that the State did not have a leg to stand on legally when it came to people with disabilities. The rip-off took place in two ways - first, through not paying them disability payments to which they were legally entitled and, second, by covering that up and adopting the same hush-hush, settle out of court legal strategy used with nursing home charges.

The Taoiseach was forced yesterday to admit he was personally implicated in the nursing homes scandal along with pretty much the entire political establishment over the past 50 years one day after saying he had nothing to do with it. The case of disability payments encompasses the period when the Taoiseach was Minister for Health. Is he personally implicated in this plan to defraud tens of thousands of people with disabilities? Will he take the opportunity to apologise to these people and their families as a first step to ensuring they receive every penny to which they are entitled? If he accepts that the State did not have a legal leg to stand on, why was this strategy pursued?

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Is any Cabinet subcommittee examining how investment funds are buying homes? The Government has defended the role of investment funds and their special tax treatment citing the need to attract investment to build new housing. However, new research by Pierce Daly shows that more second-hand homes have been bought up by investment funds than new builds. This pushes up the price of housing as funds compete with individuals and families for a limited supply of housing. The narrative that funds have been mainly involved in financing new builds is simply not true.

Will the Government end the special tax treatment for investment funds?

Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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In the past two days, the Taoiseach's position on the unlawful charging of citizens and their families in nursing homes has gone from one of utter denial to one of admitting that he may have been briefed. Nobody will be surprised at this because this is themodus operandi of the Government. It denies that it happened then admits that it did happen but downplays the significance, then finally it admits the significance but urges everybody to move along. The Tánaiste and the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications are members of Cabinet who received a memo. It outlined how thousands of vulnerable people were unlawfully denied their disability payments and included a strategy to continue this wrongdoing. The Taoiseach was at pains this morning to downplay the significance of this and highlight that it is historical. However, it is not historical. It is the Government's responsibility here and now to do this. It is much more reflective of other things that have happened that the Government has sought to do similar with.

Not two years ago, the Department of Health was compiling secret dossiers on children with autism if they were taking a case against the State. We are all acutely aware of the devastating outcomes of the CervicalCheck scandal that still looms large for so many women and their families. Bullish responses help nobody and, therefore, my questions are specific. Have the three coalition leaders discussed these memos that relate to the charging of nursing home fees and the unlawful withholding of disability payments? Have they been provided with copies of those memos and the related documentation? If not, have they asked for them? These are matters that the Taoiseach needs to get a grip on today, in real time. Finally, will the Taoiseach agree to the publication of these documents?

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputies for their questions. On the historical nursing home charges relating to private nursing homes, I emphasise again that this does not relate to anyone who is currently in a nursing home today or who has been in recent years. It relates to charges prior to the 2005-06 period. The matter was resolved prospectively when the fair deal scheme was set up in 2009, which is the legal basis by which anyone can receive a place in a nursing home and sets out the contributions that they have to make towards that, if any. The State and the taxpayer have compensated those who paid charges in public nursing homes at a cost of €480 million. That was the right thing to do. It was done at the time. The situation with private nursing homes is different. That was explained at the time in 2006. The Government does not accept that medical card patients ever had an unqualified entitlement to free private nursing home care. Even today, medical card patients who choose or are forced to go privately do not get a refund. Where we pay for private care for people with medical cards, it is done by prior agreement. There is a system in place. People cannot just bill the Government after the fact.

It was never the intention of the Government or Oireachtas to create such an entitlement, which is clear from the debates at the time; that matters. Some cases have been settled; others have not. We await a report from the Attorney General. The legal strategy has been misrepresented and memos have been selectively quoted. It is clear from the memos I have seen, though I am sure I have not seen them all, that the strategy was to identify a test case or lead case and to defend it. The State sets out what its bona fidedefence would be. There are three lines of defence. Any one of them would have been adequate. As I mentioned, some cases were settled but not all. That was done on an individual basis.

The issue of the disability payment is different. The legal advice is different and much clearer. I have not seen the 2009 memo. I just saw the programme on "Prime Time" last night. I have seen the 2011 memo but only recently. I will look into it further. As I said earlier, this relates to prior to 2007. The disability allowance has been paid in full for the past 15 years to people with disabilities and in long-term care. It relates to the period before that. That is significant.

The three coalition leaders have discussed the nursing homes issue, as has the whole Cabinet. We have not discussed the issue of the disability payment yet but I am sure we will. I would caution people not to read memos in isolation. There may be many different memos and briefing documents that might provide a different picture of things. I caution people not to selectively read or selectively quote memos. Government memos can be 50 or 60 pages long. It is easy to take out a sentence or paragraph and create a particular impression from that. When the memo is seen in totality, with all of the other memos that came before and after it, the situation may look very different. I know Members know that deep down, although they might not want to bother with that. They will all have files or documents in their offices from which one paragraph or page can be taken that would not create an accurate impression of what the entire file looks like. I know Members know that and it does not suit them to know that, but they know it.

On tax on investment funds, the Government keeps all tax matters under review. There are finance Bills every year. I am not at liberty to say what might be in the Bill, but it will become clear when it is published.