The drafting of long-awaited legislation to ease the burden of nursing home charges on farmers and other family business owners under the Fair Deal scheme is delayed again, Minister of State for Mental Health and Older People Jim Daly has told the Dáil.

"A draft general scheme of a bill is currently with legal advisers for advice and legal quality control review. There is a current delay in accessing legal responses due to the demands of the emergency Brexit legislation," Minister Daly said in response to a parliamentary question from Fine Gael TD Brendan Griffin.

Minister Daly first reported that draft legislation was undergoing legal checks at the start of November last year.

Subject to the legislative process

Although the Government approved a plan last July to take farm property out of the means-testing calculation of the Nursing Homes Support Scheme after three years for farmers who hand over to a family successor, this will now "come into effect in 2019 subject to the legislative process," Minister Daly said, with both houses of the Oireachtas required to clear the bill once it is drafted.

The reform has been in the works since a 2015 report recommended reducing the charges applicable to the value of a nursing home resident's property, including farms intended for transfer to the next generation.

"We haven't really made a lot of progress," IFA farm family chair Caroline Farrell said after meeting Minister Daly on Wednesday. She, too, was told about the Brexit-related delays and said: "The whole house shouldn't fall down because there is something else happening – however major it is."

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