Mr. Patrick Burke:

When we centralised the processing of medical cards it gave us the opportunity to apply a central national approach to the task. We are linked electronically to the death events publication service. A number of times each month, we get a data feed from the death events publication service and this is integrated into our systems. On the notification of death, eligibility ceases for a medical card. In the event of the family being slow in advising the death events publication service and we have paid capitation for a number of months, that is automatically recouped. There are no overpayments for deceased medical card holders.

The Deputy referred to historic cases that related to the previous system, in which the death of a person with a medical card was not communicated to the medical card service of the HSE. We calculated the over-payment to GPs forensically, and I think, from memory, we recouped that two years ago. We tightened up the legacy issue. Now eligibility ceases on death and in the event of an overpayment, that is automatically recouped.