Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

I support the Sinn Féin amendments. I am strongly opposed to the imposition of any charge on medical card holders, but if such a charge must be introduced these amendments would at least ensure the temptation to raise more than €2 million per month from the poorest of the poor and the sickest of the sick, via a charge of 50 cent per prescription up to a maximum of €10 per month per family, cannot be succumbed to by the Minister, Deputy Harney, or any future Minister.

When I spoke on Second Stage I did not realise there would be no Members of Fianna Fáil or the Green Party contributing to this debate. It is reprehensible that the only speaker on the Government side is an Independent Minister. It seems nobody in Fianna Fáil or the Green Party gives a damn about people with medical cards having to pay for their prescriptions. We have been extraordinarily exercised about dogs and stags in recent weeks and Members have received hundreds of e-mails from interested parties on either side of those debates. Yet this legislation is simply being nodded through as if it does not matter.

The reality is that it matters very much to people living on €196 per week, some of them with chronic illnesses and requiring vital medication. Many of these people are already counting their pennies at the end of the week and will now have to pay for medicines prescribed for them by professional medical practitioners who decide in their wisdom that they are necessary. People do not get a prescription from their GP just for the fun of it and doctors do not prescribe medicines for the fun of it; they prescribe them because, in their professional opinion, the patient needs them. As I said, we are talking about people living on €196 per week out of which they must pay for rent, fuel and groceries. In some cases they have higher costs because they have an illness or disability, and all of them will soon face higher fuel bills. Now they are being asked to pay this additional charge. These are people who did absolutely nothing to cause the problems this country is experiencing but they are the ones who must pay. I support any attempt at least to cap the charge at 50 cent per prescription or €10 per month.

Deputy Ó Caoláin referred to the Government's characterisation of the new charge as "modest". I cannot resist the temptation to refer to the savage indignation of Jonathan Swift in his treatise, A Modest Proposal, written in this city several centuries ago. In it he suggested that people might be expected to eat their children given the cost of raising them. He is not so far off the mark in that we are now reverting to a situation where we do not care too much if people have to scrimp and save in order to survive. At the same time those directly responsible for what has happened to our country are still living in their large houses. I am not referring in particular to politicians but to those who made decisions about loans, whether the developers who totally overstretched themselves to borrow vast sums they cannot now repay , the lenders who did not perform due diligence or proper risk assessment in granting those loans or the persons who were supposed to supervise all this activity in their regulatory capacity. All of these people are still living lives of relative comfort but the person on €196 per week is not.

Those who are ill and need a prescription will now have even less comfort because many of them are not exempt from these charges. They will have to find the additional money within very tight budgets. At least if these amendments are agreed they can know with certainty that the charge will not increase beyond €10 per month per family. We should not be dealing with this legislation today. It is absolutely disgraceful that there is nobody from the two parties in government willing to speak about the Bill in the Chamber when they got so exercised about wild animals, tamed animals, farm animals and so on. Animals need protection but so do human beings.

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