Repayment of the illegal nursing home charges will be the largest repayment scheme in the history of the State and will cost taxpayers about €1 billion and take years to complete, the Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney said today.
Unveiling the outline for the scheme at a press conference in Dublin today, Ms Harney said up to 60,000 cases, including some 20,000 patients and up to 40,000 relatives could be involved.
She said the statute of limitations would be applied, meaning anybody in a State nursing home between December 9th, 1998 and December 9th, 2004 will be eligible for refunds. The estates of those who died more than six years ago will not be allowed claim.
Patients who were in private nursing homes under contract will be able to claim. And refunds to patients will not be subject to tax and this money will not be taken into account for social welfare assessments. However, relatives who are entitled to refunds will have to pay tax on any refunds.
Ms Harney more than 10,000 people had contacted a helpline set up to register claims. The Government will not be searching for those who are potentially owed money.
She said setting the statute of limitations aimed to strike a balance between being fair to those who had been illegally charged with the burden faced by the taxpayer.
"In approaching this issue we sought to be fair and transparent on the one hand but also to be mindful that we are talking about a considerable amount of public money that is going to have to come from the taxpayers and we are conscious of the all the needs in our country today in health, in social welfare and education . . . "
Asked whether the decision to impose the statute of limitations was likely to face legal challenge, Ms Harney said that would be a matter for the courts. "I have taken the best advice available to me - that of the Attorney General [Rory Brady] and I am also conscious that in the Supreme Court decision the court did make reference to the statute of limitations."
"Remember everybody involved got shelter and maintenance . . . what was wrong here is not that it [the chargesp] were immorally wrong, but rather that it didn't have legal protection."
An option has been built into the scheme allowing those entitled to refunds who can afford it to choose to donate the money to the residence where they, or their relative was cared for.
Ms Harney said those administering the scheme would concentrate on refunding those patients still living and would be pro-active in contacting them. Representatives of estates would have to register a claim.
Because of the size of the refund scheme the Government is planning to employ a private claims agency to administer the scheme. Adverts will shortly be placed inviting tenders to run this scheme.
Ms Harney said she hopes to have legislation allowing the setting up of the scheme ready by the autumn. She said this legislation was not interfering with any Constitutional right and was not changing the statute of limitations.
"We are going to seek to protect the money for those that are living from perhaps unscrupulous people who might wish to exploit them . . . There are some people in the healthcare area who have told me in recent months that they have been amazed at the number of visits some of their patients have had from people [or relatives] they didn't know existed."
"Clearly there is a responsibility on me and the Government to make sure such persons are not exploited and we give as much legal protection as we can."
Ms Harney said the onus would be estates to prove their relationship with a deceased person who's stay in a care home entitles the estate to a refund. "It will be an offence, indeed a criminal offence to defraud the Exchequer and falsely claim money and people will be pursued in the normal way."
Any repayments will include both the actual change paid and the effect of inflation based on the consumer price index since the person was charged.
Ms Harney said the scheme was designed to ensure that those who were entitled to a repayment received it as soon as possible and will the minimum level of bureaucracy.