Tom Sheahan (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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Question 134: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the status of the nursing home refund scheme for the repayment of illegal nursing home charges; the number of claims received and completed to date; the amount refunded to date; the number of applications that have been rejected; the reason they have been rejected; the average time for an application to be processed; when she expects the scheme to complete its work; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24084/07]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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The Health Service Executive (HSE) has responsibility for administering the health repayment scheme in conjunction with the appointed scheme administrator KPMG/McCann Fitzgerald. The HSE has informed my Department that since the commencement of the scheme over 30,000 claims have been received and to date over 3,500 payments totalling over €71.5m have issued while over 6,250 offers of repayment totalling over €117m have been made. The HSE have also informed my Department that over 2,800 applications have been rejected up to 5 Oct 2007.

The time taken to process each application varies depending on the complexity of the application and the availability of accurate records to calculate repayment. The scheme is progressing as speedily as possible and every effort is being made to complete repayments. The HSE has indicated that the delays in making repayments under the scheme have been due to legal and technical issues. Firstly, over 14,000 estates who lodged claims to date had not extracted a grant of representation in respect of the estate of the deceased patient. In these instances the person entitled to extract the grant of representation has to be identified before an application can be processed and to date over 6,800 certificates of entitlement permitting individuals to apply for a repayment have issued.

Secondly, there has been a high incidence of claimants providing insufficient information and these claims have taken longer to process as the scheme administrator must be provided with certain information in order to ensure that the correct person and correct amount is repaid. Thirdly, it has been necessary for the scheme administrator to visit over 330 HSE facilities to scan records which form the basis for the calculation of repayments. The format in which this information is held varies widely between institutions and usually includes a mixture of paper files, handwritten files and computer files.

Priority had been given to repaying living applicants as they were most immediately affected but repayments to estates have now commenced. A two year timeframe has been allotted to the Scheme and the HSE and the scheme administrator are confident that all claims submitted by the public, including those submitted by the relatives of deceased patients will be processed within that timeframe.