Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

I assure the Deputy that under no circumstances was any direction given or intentional decision taken to slow down the issuing of medical cards. I want to rule that out because allegations were made at the end of last year that somehow this was an intentional policy to reduce the number of medical cards. I refute that.

In terms of what I stated in my reply, it would seem at this point that there is an acceptance that the HSE bit off more than it could chew in the overnight centralisation of medical cards in the middle of last year without the system being geared up to cope with that. That all came to a head at the end of last year and resulted in a situation which I have said on a number of occasions in this House was unacceptable as a public service. People were treated very badly during that period when this backlog had built up and the level of service being provided to people was unacceptable. A great deal of effort has been made in recent months to get on top of this problem and I am hopeful that all the backlogs will be cleared by the end of April and that this situation will not recur. I take the opportunity to state there was no intentional decision taken in this regard and the situation is being addressed rapidly.

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