Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is known that the Department of Health - I will leave it as being that Department, as distinct from the two successive Governments - was aware since 2008 that these particular schemes were not in line with the Equal Status Acts. The aforementioned schemes have been akimbo since the millennium year of 2000. What has the Minister of State discovered the Department of Health to have been doing to address this issue over the years spanning the end of the previous Administration to the time the present Government took office? Was it doing anything at all to address this particular issue? It is unacceptable, and in a point I have made to the Minister of State previously, I have it to say that for people in large parts of the country in which there is extremely limited public transport, not least in my own constituency, there is no great return from the travel pass for many in circumstances such as those that obtain in rural Cavan, Monaghan and many other places throughout this State. I refer to the scenario in which she is not prepared to reverse the decision announced.

Can the Minister at least tell us what might replace these schemes? Importantly, given that she has put a time frame of four months for the death of entitlement, can she give us a sense of when whatever is to replace them will come on stream?

See this speech in context