Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 November 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

General Scheme of the Health (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2023: Discussion

Mr. Paul Flanagan:

We have those numbers. From memory, the number of discretionary medical cards awarded by the HSE is in the region of 180,000. I mentioned in our presentation how where people are on the margins of breaching the income thresholds, the HSE has discretion to recognise the particular individual circumstances of applicants, be it on the basis of illness, undue financial hardship or an illness that has very high cost-incurring expenditure attached to it. In that scenario, the HSE is very active in using its flexibility and providing discretionary medical cards.

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