Supreme Court Ruling on Nursing home Theft

bonkey

irish1 wrote:

IMO people should contribute to their care if they are able but if they are unable to the state should provide care and a pension

As a short (but somewhat related aside)...

Over here, if you choose to go into state-funded (as opposed to private) care, you forfeit your assets to pay for it.

Put simply....if you own a house, and you go into state-funded care....the state takes ownership of your house. You can dodge this by transferring ownership to a spouse ro sibling....but that must be done a minimum of 5 years in advance or it doesn't count (i.e. if I handed ownership of my house over today, and in 4 years time landed in state care....they'd still take it)

I'm not sure what the situation is regarding your pension(s), but I think they are treated likewise to a lesser or greater degree.

The distinction I would see, however, is that there is no question about legality here. Its not based on someone's opinion of how it should work, its based on how the law says it works.

That, to me, appears to be the major issue in the Irish situation. Its not a case of whether or not what was done was reasonable, justified, or even "the right thing". The question is whether or not it was in concordance with the law, and if not, then who knew about it and what they did.

jc

Sleepy

Sounds like a good system Bonkey. I don't disagree that the practice was illegal. I just think that it should have been legal. Too often in this country, we are hamstrung by badly worded legislation, a large amount of which I think is badly worded deliberately and THAT as far as I'm concerned is the scandal.

Look at our tax legislation. Now, look up the people that wrote it and what they're doing for a living now...

Villain

The latest reports show that between 275,000 and 300,000 people were victims of this theft.

This is going to cost the state a lot of money, someone commented on the Last Word that they would take the money and then give it back to the nursing home, if even 50% gave the money back to the Health system we might actually stop A&E's from having over 200 people on trolleys.

tunes81

I've been following thisd the last few days and i've decided to keep a record of it on my site if anybody wants to check it out! its basic enough yet but time will deffo fill it up, if you've got any articals pass them one and i'll put them up check it out here www.finbarspellman.com/nursing-home-refunds.php

its very early stages of the site so its a bit rough yet!!!
thanks for any info

Fin

Villain

Well Miss Harney will receive the Travers report today and it will be published tuesday so keep an eye out for leaks over the weekend.

Villain

Well the Travers report was due to be published today but Bertie has had it delayed now because of apparent legal advice from the Attorney General.

More like he won't be in the Dail again for weeks so he'll have plenty of time to get his bertie speak on the situation right.

It is a disgrace that the publishing of this report has been delayed, but it's typical government spin.

A theft of up to 2 Billion has occured here.

gerrydublin

irish1 wrote:

Well the Travers report was due to be published today but Bertie has had it delayed now because of apparent legal advice from the Attorney General.

More like he won't be in the Dail again for weeks so he'll have plenty of time to get his bertie speak on the situation right.

It is a disgrace that the publishing of this report has been delayed, but it's typical government spin.

A theft of up to 2 Billion has occured here.

the government are delayin it for only 1 day, and can you blame them. It's already goin to cost us millions if not billions,
Publishing it, could open the government up to litigation from people mentioned in the report.

This way of goin thru the Dail committee means they can't be sued,
because of dail privledge
this is the best way to get the facts out there.
the alternative would have been for the government to release a shortened version that blamed no-one!

It would appear from the news reports that I heard at one, that the report puts a lot of the blame at the door of Department officials.
There appears to be no paper trail indicating that Micháel Martin knew of this.
It was discussed at a meeting which he turned up late for but his advisors attended the entire meeting-he has claimed that he missed the part where it was discussed.

I find it difficult to believe that a ministers advisors could attend an entire meeting and not discuss something as important as this with their boss...
Would the meeting not have been minuted and would the Minister not receive a copy of them even? Strange.

sceptre

Earthman wrote:

It was discussed at a meeting which he turned up late for but his advisors attended the entire meeting-he has claimed that he missed the part where it was discussed.

Nice. Only slightly more likely than "I was in the toilet, boy". The meetings are obviously minuted (the civil service like writing things) and at least the conclusions to any discussions and the recommendations from same are included. Not much good if the dog eats them though.

I may sound like I'm being a little overly sarcastic about this (though I'm doing it lightly to be honest) but it does sound rather too convenient.

Sherlock

"Put simply....if you own a house, and you go into state-funded care....the state takes ownership of your house. You can dodge this by transferring ownership to a spouse ro sibling....but that must be done a minimum of 5 years in advance or it doesn't count (i.e. if I handed ownership of my house over today, and in 4 years time landed in state care....they'd still take it)"

Not true, no government can take over anyones house. All that can happen is that they will take into account your house when assessing your means in respect of applying for a nursing home subvention. Personally I hope the goverment invoke the 6 year statute of limitations and only repay the living residents of nursing homes. How on earth could they start refunding surving relations?..whos to say how the resident would have distributed money taken ?.
Could have just spent it, cut out immediate family and given it to a favourite grandchild whatever.
This could bankrupt the country on top of all the other compensation claims such as the re-dress board (another windfall for lawyers). Are those who are anxious to see the money paid out willing to pay more tax to fund it or see a reduction in services, lets face it its got to be one or the other.

gerrydublin

how can we say anyone has been blamed,

the guy who the media say has been blamed,
has been moved to ANOTHER senior position in another state guaranteed company.

so , If I mess up in my private sector job, then my employer arranges for one elsewhere, where I get an even greater salary than before! is that right?

Scapegoat, my b*ll*cks! that's a reward for taking the flak off the Michael Martin in my opinion. Me thinks the government have been watching too much Yes Prime Minister!

Our man in Havana

Has anyone started legal proceedings against the state to recover the money?

Not that I know of.
I think anyone leaning in that direction is waiting untill the government announce their plans for the refund-how much and how far back its going to be back dated etc.
It wouldnt make much sense initiating proceedings without knowing that.

D'Peoples Voice

Earthman wrote:

Not that I know of.
I think anyone leaning in that direction is waiting untill the government announce their plans for the refund-how much and how far back its going to be back dated etc.
It wouldnt make much sense initiating proceedings without knowing that.

On a somewhat vaguely related note, does anyone know where I could get details of the policies of the Dept of Justice with respect to the payment of fines.
I remember something along the lines of a Fine Gael TD requesting that the government get the Dept of Social Welfare or a person's employer to deduct money from people's incomes to pay for any outstanding fines.
Allegedly the Dept of Justice was spending nearly so much on collecting fines that it was almost a loss making exercise.
I didn't hear the debate correctly, but it went something like the deputy said that the Dept of Social Welfare do it themselves for maintenance payments so why couldn't the Dept of Justice do it for fines. Then there was some comment by the Justice minister like it was unconstitutional to do so, but he never said why the Dept of Social Welfare could do it.
Does anyone else hear this debate late last year?
If so, could they elaborate on the details?