Pringle calls for the role of the Attorney General to be questioned

By Thomas Pringle
Updated: 9th February 2023

Independent TD for Donegal, Thomas Pringle, said the role of the Attorney General should be questioned, during a Dáil discussion of nursing home charges.

Addressing the Dáil today, Deputy Pringle said: “According to a 2011 Department of Health report, up to 250,000 nursing home residents with medical cards were incorrectly charged for public nursing home care since 1976, yet the Attorney General’s report into the nursing home fees finds that the Government acted ‘prudently’ and ‘in the taxpayer’s interests’. This report also finds that there was ‘no positive legal duty’ to proactively return the disability allowance that was illegally taken from 12,000 recipients as well.

“We are seeing here yet another example of this State taking advantage of the most vulnerable in our society and then refusing to give the appropriate redress, if any redress at all, when caught out.

“The Attorney General’s report suggests that not only is it acceptable to take money from the most vulnerable in Irish society, but the State is then somehow not legally required to give it back when they are caught,” he said.

The deputy was speaking during statements on nursing home charges.

Deputy Pringle said: “Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be true to say that I am surprised at the Attorney General’s findings, however I will say that I am extremely disappointed. The report takes an incredibly narrow view and I would question the view that the Attorney General has decided to take on this.

“I think we also need to question the role of the Attorney General, an unelected official who has unchallenged power across all government departments and often the final say on incredibly significant issues, such as this.

“It is concerning to me that we don’t question this role more, given the weight and power of his decisions. But then ministers need something to hide behind when they make a decision, and that’s why we don’t question it,” he said.

Deputy Pringle said: “His report states that the public interest, including protecting the taxpayer, ‘was the only interest of the State’ and that ‘questions of inter-generational fairness also arise in circumstances where any redress must be funded from the taxes of a younger generation of workers’.

“This completely ignores the fact that younger generations have also suffered from this, in trying to fund their parents’ or grandparents’ care, and it also calls into question the Attorney General’s idea of ‘fairness’. Is fairness taking advantage of the vulnerable in our society and then calling this a legally sound decision? Because it seems to me that the Attorney General certainly thinks so and therefore this Government thinks so as well,” he said.

A Dáil colleague speaking earlier had said she hoped today’s discussion would be the start of a larger debate.

Deputy Pringle said: “Unlike my colleague I don’t think this will be the start of the debate. I would say the Government is hoping that this is the end of it.”