Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is no point in beating around the bush here. There has been a change in the policy for awarding discretionary medical cards. Every Deputy in this House is inundated with people who historically had been awarded a medical card based on health needs on a discretionary basis. I accept that there is no change to the guidelines, because there are no guidelines on discretion. However, the evidence shows that the number of medical cards awarded on discretionary grounds has been reduced dramatically and is now under 59,000. There has been a continuous pretence that nothing has changed, but something must have changed because we have reduced the number of medical cards by such a large amount.

I would like to quote from an article in The Irish Times today about the Ombudsman, Ms Emily O'Reilly:

[The Government] also had an absolute right to govern, she said, and if it wanted to get rid of schemes that was its right. “But what is not right is if they are not clear and open and honest in relation to what they are doing.”

There is a problem, because people who are very ill and who are the sickest in our society cannot access medical cards on a discretionary basis.

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