I havenot yet find the reason why my RA5 connection would not work, but I found an alternative solution by using mister_e's keypad routines to connect my keypad to different ports. Thank you mister_e!

However, I still have a problem:
I have connected my 4x4 keypad to pin 4-7 of PORTB and PORTC and is using the following code to send the keypad output to the LCD:

DEFINE KEYPAD_ROW 4 ' 4 ROW keypad
DEFINE KEYPAD_ROW_PORT PORTC ' ROW port = PORTC
DEFINE KEYPAD_ROW_BIT 4 ' ROW0 = PORTC.4
DEFINE KEYPAD_COL 4 ' 4 COL keypad
DEFINE KEYPAD_COL_PORT PORTB ' COL port = PORTB
DEFINE KEYPAD_COL_BIT 4 ' COL0 = PORTB.4
DEFINE KEYPAD_DEBOUNCEMS 200 ' debounce delay = 200 mSec
DEFINE KEYPAD_AUTOREPEAT 1 ' use auto-repeat feature

PAUSE 500
LCDOUT $FE,1,"Initializing ...."
Pause 1000

INCLUDE "KeyPad.bas"
start:
@ READKEYPAD _myvar
lcdout $fe,1
lcdout " Key Value = ",DEC2 myvar
GOTO start

If I press a key on the keypad, then the correct key value is displayed, thus I know my keypad is connected right and working, BUT while no key is pressed on the keypad, different key values are being displayed as if a key was pressed, e.g. key value = 20, 13, 20, 05, 20, 09 .......
Every second value is a 20?
Why is this happening and how can I get rid of key values being read while no key was pressed?
Thanks for the help thusfar!