The head of the country’s largest farming organisation has dismissed suggestions that farming families are keeping relatives in hospital longer than necessary to safeguard their inheritance.
Joe Healy, president of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), criticised comments by a senior HSE executive that farmers and their families were contributing to a “bed-blocking impasse” in hospitals.
The Times revealed on Wednesday that Eunice O’Raw, head of legal services at the HSE, accused certain types of families including farmers of encouraging relatives to prolong their stay in hospital, even though they were fit to return home or be moved to a step-down facility.
In a memo sent last May to Tony O’Brien, HSE director-general, Ms O’Raw claimed that in many cases first-generation farmers were being kept in hospital by relatives to avoid potential penalties relating to inheritance tax.
Farmers who inherit land from an older relative can incur penalties if they have not managed the farm for more than two years before the date of transfer.
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Ms O’Raw also suggested that bed-blocking was caused by families trying to avoid paying to place elderly relatives in a nursing home through the Fair Deal scheme. Under the scheme, the patient’s estate contributes to the cost of private nursing home care after their death.
Yesterday Mr Healy said that Ms O’Raw had provided no evidence to support her claims. The bed-blocking problem was “no more prevalent with farming families than any other sector”, he said.
Speaking on RTE Radio One’s Morning Ireland, he said that farmers had been lobbying for years to limit the value of a farm that could be used for calculating payments under the Fair Deal scheme. “We don’t want to see farmers going out of business. We don’t want to see farms having to be forcibly sold in order to pay bills,” Mr Healy said.
The association yesterday called for the immediate publication of the recommendations of an working group which is examining the Fair Deal scheme.
Mr Healy said that many of IFA members and their families feared that the viability of their family farm would be threatened if they were forced to sell part of it to pay for nursing home care.
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It is understood that the association has proposed that up to 90 per cent of farm assets should be exempted in determining the liability of farmers.
Mr Healy said that most farmers were “asset rich but cash poor”, with many earning below the average farm income of €26,000 per year. He claimed that the Fair Deal scheme was “far from fair” as it had the potential to make farms unprofitable for future generations.
“Farms are productive assets required to generate income — they are not a measure of ability to pay,” Mr Healy said.
Under the scheme a patient’s payment is calculated based on 80 per cent of their annual income and 7.5 per cent of the value of their assets per year.
The maximum contribution from the value of the patient’s principal home is 7.5 per cent for the first three years of care. The same rule applies to the value of a farm in limited circumstances. Assets which have been transferred in the previous five years are also means tested.
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Concerns about the Fair Deal scheme were also highlighted in an RTE documentary this week which followed efforts by Brendan Courtney, the broadcaster, to arrange care for his elderly father. At present the scheme cannot be used to fund care in the patient’s own home, but this issue is also under review.
The representative body of nursing homes yesterday rejected any suggestion that they were responsible for the bed crisis in hospitals. Nursing Homes Ireland said that a snapshot survey conducted last month had shown that 742 beds were available in 176 nursing homes around the country.
Tadhg Daly, the chief executive, said it was disingenuous to attribute the problem of overcrowding in hospitals to the nursing home sector. “Nursing home care is fulfilling a lead role in supporting persons to be discharged from hospital care back into the community for transitional or long-term care,” Mr Daly said.
He claimed that the HSE was arranging for an average of 668 patients per month to use transitional care in a step-down facility, while a further 250 patients were discharged to private nursing home care under the Fair Deal scheme.