Participants in the Fair Deal Scheme should be obliged to rent out their houses

Early Riser said:
You have selected some quotes of an emotional nature (angry and/or distressed perhaps? did that surprise you?) from other posters and ignored all of the broader arguments. I suspect this is not deliberate. Like most of us, your antennae innately focus in on any "weak points" so that you underlying value system is protected.
Click to expand...



In that post, I actually apologised if I had omitted any of the rational arguments:
"Apologies if there was any argument which I omitted which had any force."

Why don't you do a balanced summary of the valid arguments, if you are not happy with mine.

Brendan
 
PMU said:
Interestingly the review noted that: “Farmers are transferring the farm and PPR to their adult child and retaining a 'right of residence' in the PPR for the remainder of their lives. In such cases the PPR is in the name of the son/daughter and cannot be included as an asset in the financial assessment - where the asset was transferred five years before applying for the scheme.” I don't know if this 'out' is available to the PAYE sector but presumably if a rental requirement were introduced it could be circumvented by a similar transfer deal. It also means that as things stand, one set of Fair Deal participants (i.e. farmers) would be outside any rental proposals as they have already transferred their farms within the family.
Click to expand...

Of course that option is available to the PAYE sector, and many non-farmers avail of it. It is a basic estate planning tool that safeguards a parent's right to enjoy their homes for their lifetime even if they have disposed of their title in that home to their child or children.

PAYE is merely a tax collection at source system for income tax.

It has nothing to do with Fair Deal, inheritances or anything else really.
 
Last edited:
jjm said:
for a minute I thought you were going to say Fg if they are not careful will finish up with less seats than Labour did after the 2016 Election
Click to expand...
No. Fine Gael's natural seats floor is much higher than Labour's as the latter have no presence whatsoever in large swathes of the country.
 
I dont doubt your intelligence, and as I said your not posting with any malice, but your beginning to sound like a maverick here. You are talking about a emotive subject weather you like it or not. Michael O Leary, another intelligent person, but if you were to give him a brief in Government, you wouldn't put him in-charge of Health.

Tough decisions are needed to get the the country out of the state its in, but not cheap ones like this.

If you spent as much time here lobbing about the ridiculous state of the welfare train, or that you get 3 years of the Medical card after you loose your job, even if you get another job next month with more pay, you still hold on to the card for the 3 year duration, etc etc. Or the LLord getting shafted and has no comeback, come on Brendan, I was trying to give you a soft landing, but we cant all be wrong here.
 
An open democracy should allow people to express their views even if the majority don't like them. An open democracy would be open to having a majority view overturned by discussion and persuasion.

Fascism is something else completely.

A majority in the States probably believes in Creationism. That does not mean it's right or wrong.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
An open democracy should allow people to express their views even if the majority don't like them. An open democracy would be open to having a majority view overturned by discussion and persuasion.
Click to expand...

Free speech is when the volleys in reaction to an unpopular opinion are verbal.

The majority view also has the right, after hearing the contrary view, to not move its position an inch.

The trick is to find the issues on which they can be nudged \ shifted ... the issues where the roots are new or in need of rejuvenation.

If you push against that rock and it moves not an inch and send verbal volleys back at you, well it's probably not one of those issues.
 
What percentage of elderly people actually end up in a nursing home, probably less than 5% so we not talking huge numbers here. The government would really want to start putting more emphasis on care in the community but no they won't invest any resources in that, too complicated for them, all we hear on news is cutbacks in home help services, no money they say. :rolleyes:
 
Here is my personal contribution to this very emotive debate.My mother who is in her 98th year is a seven year resident of a midlands nursing
home and her finances has left her in an unfair position in comparison with others.For various personal reasons my mother had rented a home
for years before she entered the facility.She had a portfolio of fixed income and equities with a value of roughly one million euros.Her income has
slipped from 40k per year to now half that amount and the remaining valuation of her portfolio has been decimated because of the yearly contribution of 7.5% up to the yearly charge of now 60k. If she had purchased a home in 2010 in Dublin for up to a million, deferred the yearly payment until after her time she would lose 22.5% of a vastly appreciating asset.I largely agree with Brendan that the family home should be treated no different to any other asset and while nobody should be forced to rent it out it should continue to be assessed for as long as the owner is in care.
 
Hi lukas

As a matter of interest, looking at your mother entirely on her own, do you think that it is reasonable that someone with €1m in investments and no house should pay for their own nursing home care?

Forget about how the scheme treats home owners for the moment.

Brendan
 
Brendan i was educated a life time ago by the Jesuits in a well known boarding school, and i now know that if i was a more attentive student i would
be better equipped to answer your very pertinent question.So rather than give you on the one hand and then the other hand on balance my answer is yes they should.
 
lukas888 said:
Brendan i was educated a life time ago by the Jesuits in a well known boarding school, and i now know that if i was a more attentive student i would
be better equipped to answer your very pertinent question.So rather than give you on the one hand and then the other hand on balance my answer is yes they should.
Click to expand...

AMDG!
 
lukas888 said:
Brendan i was educated a life time ago by the Jesuits in a well known boarding school, and i now know that if i was a more attentive student i would
be better equipped to answer your very pertinent question.So rather than give you on the one hand and then the other hand on balance my answer is yes they should.
Click to expand...

lukas888 - I assume a fee paying a school? Anyway, looking at the principle more widely - What is your view of state contributions (teacher salaries) to fee paying schools ? Should those who can afford to pay for their children's education be "subsidised by my taxes" ?
 
lukas888 said:
I largely agree with Brendan that the family home should be treated no different to any other asset and while nobody should be forced to rent it out it should continue to be assessed for as long as the owner is in care.
Click to expand...

lucas888 - I think most posters accept that Fair Deal needs to be reformed and the funding level increased from those who have assets. I seem to recall that extending the time frame was one of a number of the options posited in The Fair Deal review. It seems very rational.

What Brendan has proposed here is not of them.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
My overall principle is that people who can afford to pay for their nursing home care should do so.
Click to expand...

Brendan, I think I will drop out of this debate now as I think continuation is pointless. I will summarise my view :

1 If the aim is to increase the contribution that those with assets make to Fair Deal (to contribute to sustainably) then begin from the options in the Review document and develop from there as necessary.

2 If the aim is to bring houses from Fair Deal into the rental market then introduce an incentive.

3 If the aim is both, then do both.

I think your proposal would be extremely difficult to implement in practice even if politically achievable (which, I believe, it is not). I believe it wrong in every way to introduce such as scheme as it would, I believe, be experienced as stressful and punitive by vulnerable people and their families.

However, I think there is a more fundamental issues of values. Mine are broadly communitarian. You have a principle that those who can afford to pay should pay. I cannot see any any rational basis why then this should not be applied, firstly, to the rest of healthcare, and then to education and more widely. You may not want to go that far but if we accept the principle, others will want to bring it further. I think this leads in a dangerous direction for "society", if we could still even call it that.

If we want a society, every one must have a stake in it - to give and to receive. (And at different points in our lives we are likely to be one or the other or both).
 
Last edited:
Brendan Burgess said:
My overall principle is that people who can afford to pay for their nursing home care should do so.
Click to expand...

Counter to this: The state asks ALL of its citizens to contribute to the provision of essential care so that coverage will be available to ALL of its citizens, should they need care.

Assumption: Nursing home care is essential care.
Justification: The state funds it for citizens who cannot fund it for themselves.

I don't know if I will need nursing home care, or cancer treatment in a public hospital, or access to expensive prescription medicines for a condition. These are unpredictable, unplanned for events of unpredictable duration and cost. The same applies to all citizens.
As a society we are pooling the risks to disperse the costs of access to essential care among all citizens.

We ask a fair and proportionate contribution from all citizens towards coverage. But we do NOT ask citizens to pay the full costs of these claims where this would be a significant financial burden.

It is reasonable to charge fees to access services to ensure they are not abused.
It is reasonable to seek co-payments (relative to means) where services are accessed in the market, so that citizens can determine for themselves how best to address their needs.
Neither of the above are intended to cover the full cost of the care.

e.g. look at the prescription model which covers all citizens - either you have medical card or your prescription costs are capped. Even if someone could afford to pay €1000 a month towards their medication, we do not ask for this, given the nature of the care they are accessing.

I think that 'all or nothing' structures, such as proposed here, inherently are more likely to lead to povery traps and dependency. Further, it is undermining to society if half the people feel they are carrying the other half and getting no thanks or help in return.
I think such an approach is more likely in the long run to lead to a 'free for all' approach, where everyone must look after their own needs.
If that is the case, let us give fair warning now that the state will not be there for ANY of its citizens, and you should start making provision now for you own coverage.

It is unreasonable and wrong think that people will work hard and help out others if at the end of the day, they are left with nothing for themselves and no help is forthcoming when they need to access care.

When it comes to essential care, either we are all in this together, and the State (republic?) stands with us - or let us know that we all must stand alone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top