Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Last year, 1.854 million people were covered by medical cards. This year it is planned that to extend that to 1.9 million people. Therefore, the numbers covered by medical cards are increasing and the funding provided for them is increasing. There are decisions being made about medical cards - for example, with regard to automatic provision of medical cards in some categories - because discretionary medical cards are very important in allowing the HSE, under the Health Act, to make provision on a case-by-case basis for people who need them. Rather than allowing a category of people who may suffer from an illness but are not in difficulty with regard to paying to be automatically covered, we are providing the flexibility to deal with everybody on a case by case basis, so that those in greatest need can be guaranteed they will have the medical cover they require. That is a more sensible and rational way of dealing with the issue, rather than, as happened in the past, automatically granting medical cards to entire categories of people regardless of financial means, as happened in the case of people over the age of 70. In times of scarce resources, as now, it is important to make rational decisions. The decision is that anybody who would have undue hardship in providing medical cover, whatever his or her illness, will be entitled to a medical card. This will remain the case.

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