Maurice Hayes (Independent)

I am grateful to Senator Minihan for sharing time with me. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, to the House. He might be relieved to know I will not refer to Dickens. What does come to mind however is the Dutch folk tale of the unfortunate young boy who had to put his finger in the dyke. I hope the Minister of State's finger does not freeze off before this matter is sorted out.

The Bill is necessary and I do not have a difficulty with it. Nor do I have a difficulty with the concept that people who can afford to pay for their care in old age should make provision for that, although there is a problem at the moment in view of the apparent collapse of insurance and endowment policies. People are losing faith in that industry.

I am worried that something may be overlooked in the desire to sort out eligibility, entitlements and what went wrong. The director general's statement indicates a black hole which something fell into and everybody else hoped it would go away if they did not ask too many questions about it. I congratulate the Tánaiste on grasping the problem and dealing with it so expeditiously.

Before focusing on the need for legislation in regard to eligibility, it would also be worthwhile to think about the basic policy in regard to care of the elderly. This is most important. It is not a matter of sentimentality of emotion, it is a matter of health economics and about how one can order things in such a way that one does reduce the weight on the acute hospital sector and in so doing help people to live. Far more attention is required for domiciliary care and care in the community. Senator Minihan referred to this point. The aim should be to enable people to live in the community and maintain them there. Barriers which prevent the free movement of people from one part of the structure to another should be removed. I appeal to the Minister of State not to be satisfied with a review of the legislation but to examine the policy behind it and look at what we need to do which in the long term is of greater importance.

Another point on which I would like to comment, which also arises in the director general's note and elsewhere, is the rather cursory attention given to the finding of the Ombudsman, as if the Ombudsman were just another lobbyist. The Ombudsman is the officer appointed by these Houses to look into administrative matters. References such as "in the view of the Ombudsman" or "the Ombudsman thought" appear to me to be rather disparaging. What I thought was worse was a report I read to the effect that some health boards were remitting charges to those people who had complained to the Ombudsman but not to others. What the Ombudsman pointed to was systemic failure, in effect to class actions. It behoves a Department or health board at the stage of getting a report from the Ombudsman which shows systemic failure to look at the other examples of the impact of that failure of systems.

Like Senator Norris, I found Senator Glynn's contribution in regard to his own experience extremely interesting. It reminded me of the English professor of social administration who once remarked that where there is a will there are relatives. That is a very strong reason for ensuring that public money is not used to provide benefits for otherwise uncaring relatives.

In the context of the proportion of the pension that is retained by people, I welcome the new subsection (4) which gives the administrator the opportunity to take individual circumstances into account. Senator Glynn made a perfectly valid point, that if one gets the old age pension to provide for one's living expenses, it is unfair to expect to get other things free when one goes to hospital. However, when one is at home one has some element of control over one's expenditure. One can decide whether to spend it on A, B, C or D. Not to have that is a great indignity and loss of freedom for an elderly person. Will the Minister of State examine whether an accommodation could be made for 50% or some other percentage of it to allow people retain some independence?

I do not believe the retrospective provisions are entirely free from challenge. This is a cause for concern. Having said that, the Bill is a timely one and an attempt to create certainty where that does not exist.