Mr. Shaun Flanagan:

In the first instance, it is important that we flag upfront to the committee that the vast majority of cards we review are cards that were due to expire. We do not review cards per se. It is a very small random sample of cards of the order of 100 per month. We review cases where there have been protected disclosures in the same way as would the Department of Social Protection when information is sent to us as a protected disclosure. Other than that, when cards are due to expire, we go through them. We have data sharing agreements and legislative underpinning for the sharing of information with the Department of Social Protection and Revenue and we try to identify from those systems people who will clearly hold their cards. We also try to identify all the individuals who got a discretionary card and we try to exclude them from reviews. I would say that we select out 80% of what we are left with, rather than selecting 20%. That will obviously vary month on month. Between 64% and 80% would be selected out depending on the month of the cards. We try to avoid reviewing people who are over 80 because we do not want to upset that cohort and most of those individuals will have had their medical cards for a long time so we age stream it as well.