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

On "The "Saturday Night Show" last Saturday, the people of the country would have watched Declan and Annette Coyle talk movingly about their nine year old son, Alex, and their heartbreak and sense of bewilderment at the heartless decision to take the discretionary medical card from their son. They put on the table the entire supply of medical equipment required for Alex on a weekly basis. It was a cocktail of syringes, feeding pumps, nappies and medication. With dignity and pride they spoke about how they look after their son on a 24 hour, seven days a week basis. He has Mowat-Wilson syndrome, which is very rare. If anything captured the extraordinary scandal that has been going on in our health system for the past two years, that episode captured it.

I have raised time and again with the Taoiseach the Government's decision to end discretionary medical cards and take them from very needy people. The Jack & Jill Children's Foundation has 300 such hard cases with very sick children, and its literature is now stating that the Government is torturing the parents of such children into submission. Is that what the Taoiseach and the Government is about? Since January 2012 I have raised case after case involving issues such as this one. It is scandalous, and it reflects badly on the Government's view of issues and its sense of priority.

There are other cases. An older woman with breast cancer and secondaries who is €20 over the limit has had her medical card withdrawn, as has a man suffering from chronic depression who previously attempted suicide and is €5 over the limit. The longest surviving Irish patient of chronic myeloid leukaemia, James Mullen, who has had a medical card for 22 years only found out during a visit six months ago to his chemist that it had not been renewed. What is going on is extraordinary.

The Taoiseach has denied that there was any change of policy. We now know, courtesy of the Minister of State, Deputy Alex White, that there was. He is now questioning whether there ever was a legal basis for discretionary medical cards. That anybody would do this to such vulnerable children and adults is causing uproar and shock across the country.

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