Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

No, and there is not even any background music. The tragedy is, those over the age of 80 are trying to contact the office in Finglas. The process has just started and there will be much more about this in the next six months.

We all saw the letter from the Department which indicated that if people over 70 believed they had more than €700 per week in income, the medical card would remain. I met several people in the weeks after who got a contradictory letter which stated that the medical card must be applied for again. Those people had to go to their doctor to get the application signed and they had to go to the post office if they were in receipt of their pension by way of a book in order to verify that the pension was being received.

The Department has done its best over the years to get people's pensions paid directly to their banks, which is right. In order to verify the pension, which is going directly to the bank, pensioners need to go to the bank and the personnel in the local banks need to go to headquarters in Dublin to get proof that people are in receipt of a relevant pension. Another two or three weeks are gone in this process. On top of this, pensioners must get another verification from the bank regarding the bit of money they have to bury themselves, as they say down the country.

That is fine for able-bodied people but if we are to subject people up to the age of 90 and 95 to that carry-on, who would we be kidding? What sort of a country would that be? This will save no money at all because up until now, when applicants for medical cards went to headquarters in Newcastle in Galway or elsewhere around the country, the process went through the community welfare officer. Those people were able to help out and advise applicants. They got all the necessary information and nobody ever got a medical card to which they were not entitled.

There will be thousands of applicants who have problems such as illness and will not be able to communicate this to the office in Finglas. It means that the discretionary element of this medical card has been removed for good.

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