Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not agree. Deputy Donnelly is wrong when he said that this matter was discussed at Cabinet yesterday. There was no discussion about the under-fives or GP care at Cabinet yesterday. The Government made a clear decision to introduce free GP care for under-fives in 2014 as the first of a number of major steps leading to universal health insurance. Every parent and grandparent knows the costs of dealing with family life are now very expensive. They include mortgages, the burden of crèche fees and so on. All these hardworking parents of children in 240,000 families will now have the reassurance that they can bring their children to the doctor without having to pay for each appointment. Moneys were allocated in the budget to deal with this. There was additional separate funding of €37 million for the introduction of this key reform. It is a fully costed estimate based on current rates of reimbursement to GPs under the GMS scheme and includes capitation fees, practice support costs, other claim costs and out-of-hours costs. It is an essential part of the movement towards universal health insurance, was costed by Government and will cover 240,000 families. The parents of those children can have the comfort of knowing they will not have to pay when they go to their doctor for that GP visit.

Deputy Donnelly is also incorrect when he says that the situation regarding medical cards has changed. There has been no change in the criteria for the allocation of medical cards and extra moneys have been included for the provision of new cards this year, as one would expect.

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