The Government is concerned to avoid individuals having to take legal action to receive compensation in the nursing homes payments controversy, the Minister for Health told the Dáil.
Ms Harney also said she expected to receive the report she had commissioned on the issue by March 1st and would publish it immediately after presenting it to Cabinet.
"The Government is anxious to ensure that individuals affected and their families or estates are repaid as quickly, efficiently and as fairly as possible," she said. It was a "complex and mammoth task" because some 275,000 people were affected and it would cost a minimum of €500 million, "although it may be substantially more than that".
The Minister was responding to the Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, who suggested that by establishing a Cabinet sub-committee to deal with the issue, the Government had "effectively kicked to touch on it".
The sub-committee of the Tánaiste, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, the Minister for Finance, Mr Cowen, and the Attorney General, Mr Rory Brady, will meet today to consider a repayment scheme, following the Supreme Court judgment last week that the deduction of payments from nursing home residents' pensions, which was illegal, could not be made retrospective.
Outlining the necessity for the sub-committee, the Minister said: "We have never gone down this road before in terms of the scale of what is involved", and the Government felt that the relevant Ministers and the Attorney General should meet quickly to look at the issue and the possibility of a statutory scheme.
Last week Ms Harney accused her own department of "systemic maladministration" in dealing with the issue, which dates from 1976. In December she commissioned the former head of Forfás, Mr John Travers, to investigate the management of the issue by her Department. This included interviews with civil servants and Ministers, including Ms Harney, who was interviewed last Friday, and her predecessor as minister for health, Mr Martin.
Ms Harney told Mr Kenny: "The statute of limitations cannot apply to anybody who was not of sound mind, which would include many citizens in mental institutions, or perhaps intellectually disabled individuals. It is the intention to pay into the estates of individuals.
"However, considerable issues arise, including the administrative issue and the cost, in that we are talking about a minimum of €500 million, although it may be substantially more than that."
Mr Kenny called for confirmation that no diminution of existing health services would take place "arising from the scale and scope of the charge against the State".
The Minister said there would be no cutbacks this year in any departmental estimates. She added: "The money that will need to be repaid is money that could be used for other matters. If that money did not need to be repaid we could do other things with it".
She reiterated that a supplementary estimate would be required this year for the repayment of charges to nursing home patients, but "clearly we will need to see the nature of what will be involved this year before we decide when to do that".
