Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am not into personalities. It should not take the mother of a very young sick child to come on the national airwaves to get a decision reversed in respect of her entitlement to a medical card. That is the bottom line.

This is affecting thousands of families throughout the country. I called on a family yesterday to whom the same thing happened. They have a five-year-old with a rare chromosomal condition and the card was taken from that young child. I do not want to come to the House every week listing case after case, because when one gets case after case one begins to realise it is systemic and not simply one individual hard case or a failure of communications. It is systemic. That is the point which I and Deputy Billy Kelleher have been trying to get through to the Taoiseach for the last number of months. There is something systemically wrong and it goes back to a policy decision that the Government took on health in last year's service plan and in this year's budget, although the budget is now up in the air in respect of medical cards.

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