Beverley Flynn (Mayo, Independent)
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Question 239: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children if her attention has been drawn to the recent decision of the Health Service Executive to discontinue the payment of enhanced discretionary subventions to qualifying patients in private nursing homes; and her plans to harmonise subvention rates across the country. [28665/05]

Seán Power (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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A nursing home subvention may be paid towards the cost of private nursing home care, where a person is unable to meet the cost and where he or she has been assessed as needing nursing home care by the Health Service Executive, HSE, and where the person has satisfied a means test. The HSE may pay enhanced nursing home subvention which is more than the maximum rate of subvention at its discretion. The average rate of subvention paid by the HSE generally exceeds the current approved basic rates of subvention.

Every person in receipt of nursing home subvention and enhanced nursing home subvention is being paid and will continue to be paid by the HSE. The HSE has plans to co-ordinate the funding for subvention nationally.