Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy has asked a range of questions. The Government accepts, and the Minister for Health made quite clear, that it is completely unacceptable that families were put through the stress and strain that arose from the decision to centralise the assessment for medical cards. I pointed out to Deputy Martin yesterday that under the Health Act 1970 the cards are governed by the phrase “undue hardship” and circumstances that apply thereafter for access to medical facilities, as distinct from the particular kind of card.

Yesterday the Government made a clear decision to make €13 million available to deal with the return of cards to people who had lost them since July 2011 on a discretionary basis. When a person applies for a medical card and is turned down discretion is applied and in many cases extended, depending on the range of medical circumstances that apply, the general income of the household and so on. When the review was carried out people lost their cards. The Government’s decision yesterday was very clear. It will cost €13 million to return cards to those who lost them on the review which began when centralisation started in 2011.

One of the senior personnel at the Health Service Executive confirmed this morning that it is working flat out to ensure that within the next four weeks those cards will be returned to those 15,000 people, 13,000 of whom received a general practitioner card.

The Deputy mentioned people who applied or were unable to respond because of their particular challenge, difficulty or medical circumstance. The HSE will of course take those circumstances into account because it has to. People can be stressed or under pressure, or for various reasons may not be in a position to respond in the way that one might expect. I know for instance of a couple of cases in which people with motor neurone disease were asked by the computer to respond. They were unable to speak and move and therefore could not respond.

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