Nursing home charges will be reintroduced on Thursday, more than seven months after it emerged that the costs of care were being illegally deducted from public patients' pensions.
The State has lost an estimated €75 million since it stopped levying the charges last December on patients in public nursing homes and those in contracted beds in private nursing homes.
From Thursday, up to 80 per cent or €120 of a nursing home resident's pension will be deducted to pay for their care as the charges are re-instated.
Legislation is expected in the autumn to allow for the refunding of the illegally deducted charges to patients. This will cost the Exchequer an estimated €1 billion.
A Department of Health spokesman confirmed yesterday that the charges would be levied again a month after new regulations were signed by Minister for Health Mary Harney and Minister for Finance Brian Cowen. The Ministers signed the new rules under the Health (Charges for In-Patient Services) Regulations, 2005, on June 14th. Under the Health Act, charging for long-term care cannot start until 30 days after the regulations are signed.
It emerged in November last year that elderly nursing home residents were being charged for their care when there was no legal basis for doing so.
The Minister Health introduced legislation to legalise the charges retrospectively, but the Supreme Court judged it unconstitutional. An investigation found the Department of Health knew about the legal uncertainty for decades but failed to act on it.
Ms Harney has said that the charge regulations will affect two different groups of people in nursing homes.
Residents receiving in-patient care with nursing care provided on a 24-hour basis, will be charged €120 "or the weekly income of that person less €35, whichever is the lesser". Patients in homes where nursing care is not provided on a 24-hour basis will pay €90 or "the weekly income of that person less €55 or 60 per cent of the income of that person, whichever is the lesser".
Ms Harney said in reply to a parliamentary question on the reintroduction of charges that the "practice of charging or seeking a contribution from patients/clients who have income has been a feature of the health service for a number of years. This is consistent with the principle that where individuals are in a position to contribute a modest amount to the cost of their care, it is reasonable that they do so."
Repayments to illegally charged patients will begin once legislation is passed and those patients who are still alive will be repaid in full allowing for inflation, as will the estates of those who died in the past six years, when the statute of limitations will apply.
