Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Another area where there have been savings is from the cost of patients, including low-income patients. We were talking about Sláintecare earlier, and apart from reorienting services, a key element of Sláintecare, if not the key element, is removing cost as a barrier to accessing care. There was an announcement in last year’s budget of a number of measures which would improve affordability of care with medical cards, prescription charges and the drugs payment scheme. Unfortunately, the current Government decided not to implement that in July as had been promised and people expected, and it was delayed until November. What was the total saving from delaying those measures?