Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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I appreciate the process was centralised. God knows we had many a session here around the backlogs and delays but, fortunately, that appears to be resolved. I also appreciate that it makes rational sense to have standardised procedures and to have a standard and a transparent approach. I am not gainsaying any of that. What I am simply saying is that people - 6,324 - who are ill and in difficult circumstances who were granted medical cards on a discretionary basis now find themselves without them. I would really be interested - I know it would laborious - to read chapter and verse, almost case-by-case, about those people. As the Vice Chairman said, in our front line politics and in our constituencies - this is happening right across the State - all of us have the experience of people coming forward with serious long-term illnesses who had discretionary medical cards but who no longer have them and who have no card at all. I think I have made the point - I will not labour it - sufficiently clear to Mr. McLoughlin that I put that down, as I think any sensible person would, to a change in policy. I do not think one can arrive at any other reasonable conclusion.

In respect of children with Down's syndrome, is there a figure for those children who would have had a medical card but who no longer have one? Does Mr. Hennessy have that kind of data?