Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 14 November 2013

Public Accounts Committee

2012 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 22 - Eligibility for Medical Cards

12:00 pm

Mr. Patrick Burke:

To the extent that it can be, given that there are medical circumstances. We will share that with the client whenever we can. It might be important to put on the record that we can have applications where an individual applicant may have a life-threatening condition, for example, motor neurone disease. We have had a number of examples where a medical officer will always look at that. If one has net income in excess of €10,000 per week or €6,000 per week or €4,000 then the decision of the medical officer and the team will be that individual, difficult as their individual circumstances are, can access general practitioner services without financial hardship.