Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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Question 118: To ask the Minister for Health and Children if her attention has been drawn to the fact that many elderly persons and their families were obliged to arrange and pay for private nursing home care due to the lack of public facilities to meet their needs; her views on whether it is equitable that such persons were precluded from seeking repayment of nursing home fees under the terms of the health repayment scheme; her further views on the introduction of a further health repayment scheme to afford equity of treatment of persons who paid fees in respect of private long stay beds only because no public long stay beds were made available to them; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [7423/08]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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The Health (Repayment Scheme) Act 2006 provides a clear legal framework to repay recoverable health charges for publicly funded long term residential care. All those fully eligible persons who were wrongly charged and are alive will have their charges repaid in full. The estates of all those fully eligible persons who were wrongly charged for publicly funded long term residential care and died since 9 December 1998 will have the charges repaid in full. The scheme does not allow for repayments to the estates of those who died prior to that date. Recoverable health charges are charges which were imposed on persons with full eligibility under the Health (Charges for In-patient Services) Regulations 1976 as amended in 1987 or charges for in-patient services only, raised under the Institutional Assistance Regulations 1954 as amended in 1965.

The scheme does not apply to individuals who have entered long term residential care under the Nursing Home Subvention Scheme. In the case of private nursing home care the contract is between the individual and the private nursing home owner. It is not my intention to extend the parameters of the health repayment scheme.