Social Policy Minister Michael Farrugia this evening admitted in parliament that he made a ‘cardinal mistake’ when, as health minister between 1996-1998 he decided that admissions to old people’s homes should be through St Luke’s Hospital.

The end result, he said, was that the word spread that one should go to hospital in order to get himself into an old people’s homes and from, say, 100 patients, one ended up with 200 in hospital.

Dr Farrugia was replying to questions by Nationalist MPs Claudio Grech and Robert Cutajar.

He said his mistake was repeated by others, and the system of admissions was kept under review. But the best system appeared to be to have a percentage of admissions from hospital – now Mater Dei – and directly from the  community.