John Lyons (Dublin North West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I worked as a secondary school teacher for 13 years before becoming a Deputy as I have said on umpteen occasions. One of the keys to being a teacher is to deal in fact not hearsay. I am not saying that anybody here today spoke completely on the basis of hearsay but all debates should be based on fact. If some facts are of concern we need to address them.

I read through the briefing material that sets out the facts of the situation and through the material detailing the allocations of medical cards for the past ten years and while it has been reiterated already I want to compare the allocations at that time and now. Some 28.3%, or 1.145 million, of the population, had a medical card ten years ago and we expect that percentage will have risen to 40.8% by the end of this year. Many more people have a medical card today compared to ten years ago. People who are listening to or watching these proceedings or sitting in the Chamber might think that is due to the fact that more people are unemployed and they qualify on the basis of their financial circumstances. However, the facts speak for themselves; incrementally year in year out, bar perhaps one year when the figures plateaued, more people received medical cards each year during the past ten years. That is a fact.

We know that more people have a medical card now and that must be acknowledged. If a person was to come and listen to this debate, he or she would think that medical cards are being withdrawn on a mass scale and that almost everybody who had a medical card has had it removed, but that is not the case. The fact is that many more people have medical cards today compared to ten years ago, that number issued has been growing year in year out through the good and bad times and this Government has increased the number of cards issued. As Deputy Maloney said, 60,000 odd additional people who do not have a medical card now will have one by the end of the year.

Another fact, as we all know, is that medical cards have been removed from people who perhaps in the light of things may have been entitled to a card. That seems to be factual. We need to sort out that fact, examine why that is happening and rectify it. The Minister of State is trying to do that.

I went out to Primary Care Reimbursement Service, PCRS, building in Finglas in my constituency a number of years ago to see how the new centralised system processes medical cards and in fairness to the public servants there they are doing a good, decent job. When a service is centralised or there is a move from one system to another, there can be kinks in the system that create problems and it is a question of identifying those and solving them. If people are still getting letters, and we heard about some of the cases that were mentioned today and I do not want to question them because I do not know the individuals concerned, those issues need to be sorted. If a person genuinely qualifies for a medical card, he or she should be entitled to it and all the necessary systems should be in place to make sure that happens. The centralised system is operating better today as opposed to this time three years ago but there are some kinks in it that are still causing problems. Nobody who is entitled to a medical card should be without it.

I wish to raise a few matters that I find frustrating. Even in a case where the guidelines would indicate that a person who is genuinely entitled to a medical card having regard to their circumstances should qualify sometimes that person does not qualify. Most of us, unlike the Deputy from Kerry, do not sensationalise matters and look to vox populi. I am not referring to the Sinn Féin Deputy from Kerry who is present but to a previous speaker and those who were here earlier will know what I am talking about. I can remember being only short of printing a medical card for a person who ended up qualifying for it and this was prior to the Minister of State's watch. This problem has been around prior to his watch and he should not be taking complete responsibility for it. Some people seem to have forgotten that.

We need to establish our debate around the facts. We need to deal with the issues that are coming up where things are not working out on a factual basis and we need to come up with solutions. The Minister of State is working on those types of issues and we speak regularly about them. If we want to give medical cards to some people who we think should have them, that would involve changing the legislation based on criteria other than finances and so on. It is important that we deal with this issue in the context of the facts and they have been missing at times. I cannot stand sensationalism because it scares people and we should not be in business of scaring people.

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