Legislation to repay patients illegally charged for long-stay care will be brought to Cabinet on Tuesday, and is likely to be passed before the summer.
Minister for Health Mary Harney also said that legislation to establish a nursing-home inspectorate would go to Government next week.
She was responding to Opposition leaders who criticised the delay in bringing long-awaited Bills before the Oireachtas.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said a nursing-homes inspectorate had been promised three times last year, but "there is no sign of it".
More than a year after the Supreme Court judgment on the charges imposed on people in long-stay institutions, there was no sign of legislation to provide repayments to them.
"The Tánaiste is aware that many such people are reaching the end of their lives."
Ms Harney said the nursing-charges legislation "will be brought through the Oireachtas over the next few months, and it is hoped that it will be passed by the summer".
It had proven "quite complex as a result of issues relating to wards of court, etc. It is ready to be considered by Cabinet."
Opposition deputies were also angry over the delays in getting answers to health questions. During angry exchanges TDs said their questions were referred to the Health Service Executive (HSE). Emmet Stagg (Labour, Kildare North) said "it is taking two months to get answers to straightforward questions".
He added that "it is not appropriate that the questions we ask in the House are answered privately, sometimes by telephone".
Bernard Durkan (FG, Kildare North) said the House was being abused, and said he had put a question to three Ministers about an urgent issue of two children absent from school and home. However the other Ministers referred it to the Department of Health "which means I will never get an answer to my question".
Ms Harney said the idea "that three Ministers would be asked why two children were absent from school is a bit much".
Tommy Broughan (Labour, Dublin North East) suggested that the head of the HSE, Prof Brendan Drumm, "seems to be the Minister for Health" because most health questions were referred to him.
Ms Harney said the chief executive officer of the HSE was the chief accounting officer, and he was the accountable person for operational matters.
A parliamentary division had been established in the HSE, "which has not been in place for much longer than a year or 14 months". The executive is "currently beefing up its parliamentary affairs division. I answer a couple of hundred questions in the House every week on policy issues."
