Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will not comment on individual cases because I do not have access to people's private records. Let me reiterate that somebody might not have a medical card but may have a doctor visit card, a long-term illness card and access to aids and appliances, in which case giving the person a medical card would potentially save money, believe it or not, because he or she would be entitled to less. That is just an aside. I expect when the clinical advisory group reports in three months time it will propose to widen discretion further.

If it does, it does. If that means 10,000 or 20,000 more medical cards than we had thought, then they will be allocated. Every year, there is a risk of overruns under that subhead. Certainly, we are not going to be reining in medicines or medical cards to meet that figure. If it overruns, it overruns.

The committee should bear in mind that the figure for long-term residential care is only the Exchequer allocation. In addition to that there is the contributions people make to the fair deal scheme. Therefore, the real amount spent on the fair deal scheme is closer to €1 billion. That figure can be a little misleading.

We have an existing capital programme for the refurbishment and renovation of community nursing units. I will set out for the committee a list of the units that are being upgraded and refurbished in 2015 alone. They include: Virginia; St. Mary's in Castleblayney, St. Oliver Plunkett's in Dundalk, Ashgrove House on the Navan Road in Dublin; the Dalkey Community Unit; Belvilla on the South Circular Road; Meath Community Hospital; Maynooth Community Hospital; Birr Community Hospital; St. Vincent's in Mountmellick; St. Joseph's in Longford; Bantry; Bandon; Kilrush; Ennistymon; Raheen; Castlebar; and Sligo. It is not that we are doing nothing. Many community nursing units are either being refurbished or rebuilt. It is simply not happening quickly enough and certainly we need to accelerate that.