Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This legislation underlines the complete incoherence of the Government's health policy. In theory the Government is supposed to be extending access to primary care. However, in reality it is reducing access. This measure and the other budget measures are taking €149 million from the medical card scheme. That represents tens of thousands of medical cards that will be withdrawn from people who need them in the coming year, which is a scandal.

This legislation means that those over 70, who everybody in government deemed were entitled to medical cards, are now losing that entitlement. The new income limit that applies to the over-70s is a gross income limit. It is not net and there are no disregards. It does not matter what are a person's medical expenses. It does not matter what are their other living expenses; only the gross figure is taken into consideration. In some cases that amounts to lower income than for people under 70, where disregards are allowed. The point is that it is based on a gross figure. Taking that into consideration plenty of people who absolutely need a medical card will now lose it.

The medical card for the over-70s is essential not just because it gives them access to the GP care and medication they need, more importantly the medical card gives them access to all those other community-based primary-care services that are so critical to people in their older years when they depend on things such as physiotherapy, speech and language therapy if they are recovering from a stroke, home-help services and public health nursing services. The 35,000 people over 70 who will lose their medical cards will be denied access to those services. That means there will be no access even if they could afford to pay for it because those kinds of essential primary-care services are available only through the public system.

This is a disgrace and all those on the other side of the House who are party to this and support this legislation should hang their heads in shame.

See this speech in context