Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I understand that the Minister for Health went to the Cabinet yesterday to propose the HSE spending plan for 2016. From what we know about his proposals our health services will continue to be under-funded. One of the big ideas the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, proposed was based on the assumption that 125,000 medical cards will not be required next year. I do not know how the Government worked that out but I tried to picture the scene where the Ministers all sat around the Cabinet table, cogitated on this and obviously did not consider that there is a deserving citizen and a family behind every medical card. It was all a numbers game. Maybe one Minister said, "Well, 125,000 fewer medical cards, that sounds a wee bit high". Maybe somebody else said, "Let us go for €100,000 fewer medical cards". What was the Taoiseach’s preference? Was it 80,000 or 75,000 fewer medical cards? Did he pull numbers out of a hat?

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