Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will probably need a quarter of the time available to me. As the saying goes, less is more. I welcome this Private Members’ motion on the domiciliary care allowance and easier access to a medical card not based on financial circumstances, but on medical need. The hardship of an acute medical prognosis, which is then questioned and audited by unnecessary bureaucracy, leads to undue hardship.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to extend entitlement to a medical card to all children in receipt of the domiciliary care allowance in this year’s budget. I hope the day will arrive when all health care, regardless of income, is universal. Perhaps one day medical cards will be a thing of the past. Public health and access to public health services should be based not on an audit of one’s income, but on one’s health requirements. When one’s child or family member is very sick, one would do anything to make the pain go away. The added stress of having to justify and jump through legal hoops and bureaucracy to get something to which one’s child is entitled does not have a place in a society that calls itself “civil”. Begging and entitlement has no place in the health care system. Compassion and discretion do not have a price tag.

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