Not being honest in declaring income and assets in your Fair Deal or social welfare applications could spell trouble down the line. Margaret Hawkins reports on the checks that can be done to see if you have been honest

in your asset declarations

You are filling in the Nursing Homes Support Scheme (NHSS or ‘Fair Deal’) application form and you forget - or choose not to include - some cash assets or savings that you have or a UK pension, perhaps, or a property that you are renting out…

While this may not have any immediate consequences and you may go on to avail of HSE supported care in the nursing home of your choice for some time, the truth may come out in the wash - or the will to be more precise - as a result of HSE cross-checks after your death.

So what kinds of HSE financial cross-checks should we remind ourselves about in order to avoid problems down the line for those who inherit or have executor responsibility related to our estates?

The review of the Nursing Homes Support Scheme 2015 carried out by the Department of Health and the HSE in conjunction with Deloitte and Touche made the planned tactics clear.

“Nursing Home Scheme Offices rely heavily on the honesty of applicants in the context of financial declarations,” the report said.

In order for those who are dishonest to be caught out it was recommended in the report that staff in Nursing Homes Support Scheme Offices (NHSOs) be given the resources and the specialised expertise needed for the task of checking the information supplied in the application.

Spot checks were also advised – but how are these spot checks done? How can the HSE verify that what you’ve said on your ‘Fair Deal’ application form is true and a full disclosure of your wealth, for example?

The HSE require this information in order to come up with the correct figure when calculating the amount of money you should contribute to your care and the amount the State should pay towards your care.

Here are some of the ways they can check this:

  • • By looking at the property registers maintained by the Property Registration Authority. A look at this will identify all properties or land attached to your (the applicant’s) name.
  • • By checking with the Private Residential Tenancies Board the HSE can confirm whether properties are being rented and therefore earning rental income.
  • • By looking at the valuation bands used by the Revenue Commissioners for the purposes of local property tax. This can give the HSE an estimation of the value of a property in a given locality.
  • • The website of the Courts Service also provides a probate service search tool which can provide information on the personal representative and the assets of a deceased person.
  • • Pension Board systems can be used to confirm pension income.
  • • Community Welfare Officers can be asked to carry out spot checks on bank statements.
  • • Your will after your death. The HSE or Department of Social Protection (if you have a non-contributory pension, for example) can request a copy of this from your next of kin after you die (see reader’s story below). If your assets don’t match what you put down on your ‘Fair Deal’ application form they will re-calculate your liability and look for the correct sum.

    • WHAT KIND OF UNDER-VALUING DOES THE HSE COME ACROSS?

    The review of the Fair Deal scheme in 2015 found several issues around the valuation of property.

    That was because applicants are able to arrange their own auctioneer/valuer to value their home and other property. This has obvious limitations according to the HSE. Firstly because applicants could encourage or pressurize the valuers to set their estimate toward the lower end of the range that a property might realise. Secondly, in a changing market it can be difficult to accurately estimate what a property will realise, they said.

    In the future the HSE is considering appointing a panel of valuers for each area of the country to carry out valuations for NHSS applications.

    Applicants would then be unable to choose their own valuer and the valuers would be responsible to the HSE rather than to the NHSS applicant for maintaining robust standards.

    Why is the HSE planning this? A sample survey carried out by the HSE prior to the 2015 report showed that in 30% of cases where a schedule of assets was available almost a quarter of applicants had under-declared cash assets.

    RANDOM AND TARGETED SPOT CHECKS

    Random and targeted spot checks are also carried out.

    There is rigorous following up on the requirement for the personal representative to make a full declaration of assets following the death of a client, for example.

    If returns are not received the NHSO can use probate records to follow up.

    The Department of Social Protection may also be consulted relating to information that might benefit the NHSS’s administration, the reviewers said.

    An example of spot checks was provided by a Leinster reader who has been in touch with Irish Country Living recently.

    His mother was in receipt of a non-contributory pension and in a nursing home for several years prior to her death and had availed of the ‘Fair Deal’ scheme.

    Within weeks of her death a letter arrived from a customer service representative in the estates section of the state pension (non-contributory) section of the Department of Social Protection.

    He requested a copy of her will under Section 339 of the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act 2005.

    No such letter had arrived after our reader’s father’s death some years ago so it was unexpected.

    “It was a bit unnerving,” he says. “My mother had been totally honest about her financial situation in relation to pension and Fair Deal applications and anything else she had ever applied for in her life, but it was like they were checking up to see if she’d been telling lies.”

    Under section 339 of the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act 2005 they were asking for a copy of her will, if she had one, and for the next of kin to provide a copy of their mother’s schedule of assets, ‘not less than 3 months before distributing the assets of the person’s estate.’

    The letter was also stating that the personal representative of the deceased would have to keep back money in case it was found that the deceased had claimed money to which they weren’t entitled and that if all this isn’t done the personal representative would be liable for any amount due.

    The reader has sent off a copy of his mother’s will as requested, he says, and as there was full disclosure in any application she ever made he doesn’t foresee any problem.

    “Still, it knocked me sideways a bit getting the letter.

    “People should know that cross-checks are carried out. While I don’t know if this was sent as a cross-check because our mother was in a nursing home under the Fair Deal scheme it would certainly be a way of checking up on whether she had more than what she was saying she owned when she was applying.”

    WHAT THE FAIR DEAL ACT SAYS ABOUT DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION

    Under the Nursing Homes Support Scheme Act 2009 it is an offence to provide false or misleading information. The Act provides that when a person in receipt of financial support under the scheme passes away, their personal representative must provide the HSE with notice in writing of their intention to distribute the deceased’s assets and a schedule of the assets at least three months before the estate is distributed.

    The Act enables the HSE to recover monies from the deceased’s estate if there has been a non-disclosure or misstatement in relation to the assets.

    The 2015 report into the scheme advised standardising all review procedures across all Nursing Homes Support Scheme Offices round the country and ensuring available information is accessed and used.

    “This is in order to ensure that each client has made or is making the correct statutory contribution to the cost of their care,” the report stated.

    Amendments to the Act were also suggested to enable the HSE to apply current values when conducting three year reviews or after-death reviews.

    LOW OWNERSHIP OF HOMES QUESTIONED

    One of the observations that got a lot of attention in the report was that a lower than expected number of applicants actually owned their home.

    While other surveys of home ownership by the elderly showed that over 85% of older people own their homes only 56% of those who applied for the ‘Fair Deal’ did.

    The reasons suggested for this in the report included:

    Farmers transferring the farm and private principal residence (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.

    Applicants have sold their PPR and are renting a smaller PPR.

    Further analysis was to be done into the reasons for this low ownership figure, the HSE said.

    NURSING HOME COSTS

    What is the current cost of a month’s stay in a private nursing home and in a public one?

    Table 1 below shows prices from 2014-2017. Public nursing homes usually provide care for patients with more complex care needs – that is why they are more expensive.

    PRICES OF NURSING HOMES

    See www.hse.ie and key in ‘cost of care in approved facilities’ to see weekly prices in public and private nursing homes in your county.

    HSE-agreed prices with private and voluntary nursing homes and public nursing homes across the country from April 2018 are available online at this HSE link. In general, prices for Dublin, Cork, Wicklow and Kildare are more expensive than other parts of the country with charges usually starting about €1,000 per week and going up to €1,255.

    In Carlow the average price is €880, in Westmeath it is €847, Laois is €941 and in Sligo it is €963. Don’t forget other nursing home charges which may be added on top of that, though, which can be between €30-€90 per week for items like newspapers and activity costs. CL