BILL TYSON
Upsetting but unbalanced documentary on Fair Deal care scheme sparked fury
The plight of presenter Brendan Courtney’s father – highlighted by We Need To Talk About Dad on RTÉ this week – has sparked a national debate. Frank Courtney had a second stroke and now needs full-time care. As Brendan told us: ‘My dad was a builder. And his power was his bigness and his strength. But he doesn’t have that any more. So that’s very sad.’
His family face a dilemma we will all have to deal with some day – what Brendan called a heart-breaking new reality, saying: ‘We need to find a way to bring our dad home or face the fact he may have to live the rest of his life in a nursing home.’
The documentary was an open, honest and thorough exploration of a really important issue made accessible through the experience of a Dublin family who allowed us accompany them on a very emotional journey. The problem, as ever, is money: how to finance care, particularly if Frank returns home to receive it there.
For care in a nursing home, the Fair Deal scheme offers a solution. Brendan’s family found it very complex – and controversially, it involves, using a portion of the family’s assets. The programme sparked a furore – that was sometimes unfair and often generated more heat than light.
Of course the scheme is compli- cated. That’s because it bends over backwards to be fair by using part of the family home’s value, while protecting it at the same time.
Other social media commentators were angered the family home was involved at all. One – incorrectly – raged: ‘Why do old people lose their homes to pay for care?’. Actually, they don’t. Another fumed: ‘The more you have the more you pay.’ Well, that also means the less you have the less you pay, which is the basic principle of our social welfare system.
And why shouldn’t people be at least partly means tested to fund private healthcare?
Maybe at some point in the future we’ll be able to afford unlimited healthcare for everyone regardless of their income.
But even now the Fair Deal scheme will cost €940million in 2017 – that’s a lot of money. That’s €18.5million more than last year. An extra 500 people will be added to the scheme, bringing the total to over 23,600 by the end of the year.
How much more would it cost if wealthy beneficiaries weren’t asked to contribute?
Could we afford this with a hard Brexit coming down the tracks – it’s going to cost 40,000 jobs and slash economic growth by 4% as it emerged this week?
The scheme, as it stands, is quite generous and fair. It protects the family home, while using a small
portion of its value to pay for care. Here’s how it works:
The recipient, Brendan’s dad Frank, for example, pays 80% of his income and 7.5% of his total assets every year for three years towards the cost of his care in a nursing home.
The assets include the family home. But crucially, this element of the payments are capped and stop after three years.
The first €36,000 of your assets, or €72,000 for a couple, are also not counted in the financial assessment.
Where assets include land and property, the 7.5% contribution that’s based on these assets may be deferred and paid to Revenue after the death of the person in care. The contribution is also capped at 22.5% of the home value for a single person and 11.25% for a couple.
Their spouse or partner can also apply to have the repayment of the loan further deferred for their lifetime.
The surviving partner continues to own and live in the home and the loan is repaid only when they sell the house or pass away themselves.
The interest is linked to the Consumer Price Index, which is currently close to zero or negative. That sounds reasonable. Of course, farmers have lobbied, successfully it seems, to have farms exempted, or partly exempted, from the definition of ‘family assets’.
Fair play to them – but how do they get away with it? A farm is a business and an extremely valuable asset at that.
Why not exempt shops, hotels, or even family-run factories as well?
Brendan Courtney said we are the first generation to be forced to address this issue of caring for our parents. That’s not quite true.
Previous generations had the same problem – only before 2009, they had no Fair Deal scheme to fall back on. Families would have been forced to sell the home to pay for unlimited nursing home care bills. But the scheme has limitations. The Courtney family were being billed around €2,500 a week for their dad’s care in a hospice.
Yet it would cost much the same to look after him at home – which they very much wanted to do – yet there’s no funding available for this.
His mother was particularly distraught over being unable to fund home care.
She pleaded: ‘Why am I being made to feel every day like I’m being a traitor to him [by leaving him in a home]?’
Brendan said: ‘The fair deal is… a fair deal if you want to go into a nursing home. Yet all the experts are telling us that’s not the best option. You’re 30% more likely to die [in the first year] if you go in against your will. That’s disgraceful.’
The day after the documentary was screened, the minister of state for older people, Helen McEntee, announced a consultation process ‘with a view to’ establishing a new statutory home care scheme.
It’s a start – but it won’t produce any results for at least three years. This seems a bit tardy when it appears that the cost of being at home is similar to care in a home.
And there’s little doubt about where people would prefer to be – or are considerably better off.