Plan built on treating all fairly might spell an end to care home issue

FINDINGthata mother, father or other close relative needs long-term nursing home care poses many emotional and personal difficulties for families. But it also raises many practical issues – not least financial.

On the one hand, the misfortune of being rendered unable to care for oneself could consume all that a person and their family worked for, most notably a beloved home. But on the other hand, if the taxpayer is left to carry the entire responsibility, relatives may ultimately be left with a significant inheritance without having contributed to the costs of long-term care.

The Fair Deal scheme, which then-health minister Mary Harney introduced in October 2009, was an attempt to address these and other deeply personal and emotive conflicts. It is of necessity a complex scheme, but in principle it involves a person going into care contributing 80pc of income, and 7.5pc of assets capped at three years.

For quite some time, farmer unions have pointed to what they saw as an unfair aspect of the scheme. It is that the three-year cap for a principle asset does not apply to a farm as the levy can go indefinitely. Clearly, this raised the prospect of the entire farm being taken via the 7.5pc yearly levy. It raised serious consequences for inheritance by family members compounding their dilemmas on this. It was also a further bugbear militating against uphill efforts to get younger people into farming.

In a sense, this is implicitly recognised under the existing scheme, because exceptional cases are made when the farmer or business owner becomes ill or disabled suddenly, and there is a family successor identified.

Objective observers can agree that a valid case was effectively made by the IFA, ICMSA and others. There were good grounds for change in favour of farmers.

But that dislodged other questions about fairness and equity. In recent weeks, it emerged that the Attorney General’s advice to the Government was that if a concession was given to farmers, then other sectors must also be taken into account.

Irish people have a particular attachment to land, which gives farming a unique status in national life. But other businesses are also entitled to similar consideration since people with shops, factories and other concerns are in a very similar situation to farmers.

Older People Minister Jim Daly, in his job since last June, has commendably decided to introduce the same three-year cap on assets in a bid to slash the bills facing thousands of farm and business families.

The plan, which requires approval from Attorney General Seamus Woulfe, has been discussed between Mr Daly and the IFA. If the details are agreed, this long-running controversy over Fair Deal could end.

It has been a heavily charged political issue. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar also intervened in the debate, warning farmers and small business owners must be treated in the same way as ordinary householders. In the end, farmers and business people face huge financial burdens when looking after their elderly loved ones.

Everyone is entitled to fairness.