Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

People have medical cards based on their financial circumstances and weekly incomes, for single people €700 per week and for married people €1,400 per week. Anybody who does not qualify on those grounds has the same routes available to people under the age of 70, including somebody aged 68 or 69. This provision was introduced in 2001 when the country's circumstances were very different. The parties opposite did not bring in a provision to give over 70s medical cards when they were last in government because the economic circumstances did not allow it. Today's economic circumstances are very different from those in 2001, as everybody here will acknowledge.

This is not a case of fiscal rectitude coming before the elderly. Fiscal rectitude is a means to an end, the end of generating the economic wealth to allow us to have better health and education services and welfare provision. Health expenditure accounts for 30% of the money we spend running this country. The percentage expenditure increase in health next year is the lowest in ten to 12 years because of our economic circumstances. We want to maintain home help hours, which increased by 3% in 2008 over 2007; continue delivering home care packages to those who need them most, based on medical or clinical need, to allow older people to stay at home; introduce the fair deal to help those who are really strapped trying to pay for nursing home care, as everybody here would acknowledge; and maintain as many services as possible at primary, community and continuing care level and at hospital level. To do this we need to make choices and in that context the Government made this decision in budget 2008.

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