A Co Offaly former farm owner will no longer have to draw from her own State pension to cover her husband’s nursing home costs if a Government bill to ease nursing home charges applicable to farm property is passed into law.

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Billy O’Brien, 94, entered the Fair Deal Scheme in January 2014. He has Alzheimer’s disease, poor mobility and needs full-time care. His wife Kitty and daughter Hilda showed the Irish Farmers Journal nursing home bills for €297.51/week and correspondence from the HSE detailing his means assessment based on his €248.30 weekly pension and property.

Current Fair Deal rules caught up with the family after Kitty inherited a 35ac beef farm from her brother when he died in 1994. At the time, the scheme did not exist and her solicitor advised her to keep the land in her name, while her son, Liam, took over the farm and herd number.

“I applied for my pension and transferred the farm to Liam in 2013,” Kitty said. But it was too late: within months, Billy had entered the nursing home and the HSE assessed all the property owned by the married couple for the past five years in accordance with legislation. Neither Kitty nor Billy ever ran the farm, merely helping their relatives down the years. “I never got anything out of the farm,” Kitty said.

The inclusion of the farm’s €300,000 valuation in the means-testing equation resulted in the charges left to pay by the family to be higher than Billy’s pension. Kitty said she makes up for the €50 difference from her own pension every week. “There are other charges of €20 to €30/month for the chiropodist, the pharmacy, the hairdresser – I pay for these and I provide his clothes and toiletries,” said Hilda.

Her two brothers including farmer Liam contribute less regularly because they have their own families to provide for, she added. “We’re trying to keep our head above the water, we can cope but it’s hard,” Kitty said.

Billy’s care originally cost them €333.87 a week, but this dropped by €36 last year because the value of the family home is no longer included in the 7.5% annual charge on property after three years under current Fair Deal means-testing rules.

Proposal

The Government proposal is to extend this three-year cap to “productive assets” such as farmland. HSE correspondence shows that this would save the O’Brien family another €60/week. “There would actually be something left from Daddy’s pension to pay for pharmacy, etc,” said Hilda. “We could start putting something back into this old house,” she added, sitting with Kitty in the kitchen of the family home they share.

The two women say Billy is well cared for and comfortable. Kitty does not blame her solicitor for the advice she got when legislation was different.

Yet, they are eagerly awaiting changes to the complex rules that have put such a strain on their family. “The hardship you go through is unbearable,” Kitty said. “I didn’t understand what was going on, it was horrific.”