Mr. Bernard Gloster:

To be fair to everybody operating the system, there are two critical points. The focus of improvement has been to try to make healthcare affordable, improve affordability and increase eligibility, and like Deputy Cullinane said, moving on up the age of cards for children and so on. The current underpinning framework and policy is means-related, and there is discretion within that. It is not condition-specific or condition-related. All that I would say, in fairness, is that we cannot get it right, and we have to take what Deputy Durkan is saying, take it seriously and reflect on it. What I would say to members regarding the intention of utilising discretionary cards, is there is something in the fact that there are over 200,000 of those cards there. That shows that the system is applying discretion. How good or bad that is, is something I am happy to take away and reflect on and on the policy position, I am very happy to talk to the Secretary General and the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, to see what further we could do on our side to make that better for people.

Our only wish is to provide people with services and support, to acknowledge that people experience difficulty in that and to try and respond to that difficulty.