Minister for Health Mary Harney is to bring a memo to Cabinet at its first meeting after Easter about the establishment of a scheme to refund illegally deducted nursing home charges.
She told the Dáil that a Government committee, established to examine how the scheme could be structured, met yesterday to consider the refunds, estimated at up to €2 billion.
Ms Harney also defended a decision not to release legal advice to the South Eastern Health Board about the nursing home charges because it referred to other issues which were about to go before the courts.
She denied allegations by Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte that the decision not to release the documents was "surely calculated to protect her Cabinet colleague", former minister for health Micheál Martin.
However, Ms Harney said the Attorney General had "strongly advised that I would strongly prejudice the position of the State, if those documents were released".
The Minister, taking Leaders' Questions in the absence of the Taoiseach, who is at an EU summit, had given an undertaking that documents prepared for a key meeting in December 2003 would be published.
The meeting, attended by senior Department of Health officials, the then minister for health, two ministers of state and health board chief executives, considered the issue of nursing home charges which were deducted from the pensions of long-stay public patients.
Ms Harney told the Dáil yesterday, however, that two issues in the briefing documents were published in the Travers report into the controversy, and two related to the health board legal advice.
"That contains advice other than in relation to long-term charges. It contains advice on matters that are about to come before the courts. Cases are pending on other issues which are dealt with in those legal opinions."
Mr Rabbitte said if other matters were referred to they should be "excised" from the documents, which could then be published.
Ms Harney said "the matters are all intertwined, so this was impossible and it would not have made sense".
Mr Rabbitte also questioned who the Minister was referring to when she said before the Travers report was published that there was "systemic maladministration" in the department, and that it did not relate solely to officials.
He asked how it was that Mr Martin was the only person who knew nothing about what was going on.
Minister of State Tim O'Malley had said he understood the full legal, financial and political implications of what he read, and he probably "should be considered for promotion in that at least he reads his documents".
Minister of State Ivor Callely "briefed the Taoiseach, thereby taking out an important insurance policy. He has now implicated the Taoiseach, who cannot sack him because he told him all about it," said Mr Rabbitte.
Ms Harney said maladministration might also involve politicians. The Travers report "was clear as regards where blame lay". There were misgivings about Ministers for not probing the issue more deeply, but "it was nothing in comparison to the fault that lay in the corporate public administration of the Department of Health".
