Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the difficulty for certain individuals and families. We all, as constituency TDs, try to work with families and individuals to support them in the application process. The HSE and all Departments and agencies should strive to make sure that applying for public services is a user-friendly process for everyone involved. As the Deputy mentioned, lengthy documents or a lot of over-and-back can be particularly difficult for people applying. I will reflect that feedback to the Minister for him to engage with the HSE. As I said, eligibility for a medical card is based on a financial assessment conducted by the HSE in accordance with the Health Act 1970, as amended. There are nearly 1.6 million medical cardholders and more than 660,000 GP visit cardholders. Budget 2023 facilitated better access to affordable high-quality healthcare, including an expansion of GP care without charges to children aged under eight and to people earning no more than the median household income, the abolition of all public inpatient hospital charges for adults and the extension of the free contraception scheme. In addition, up to approximately 500,000 additional persons who otherwise would have attended their GP on a private basis are expected to become eligible for free GP care under this expansion. This wider expansion means more than 42% of the population has access to free GP care. As outlined, the issue of granting medical or GP visit cards based on a particular diagnosis, disease or illness was previously examined and it was said it was not feasible or ethically justifiable to specifically sequence or list medical conditions in priority for eligibility for a medical card. In following the group's advice, a person's mean remains the main qualifier. In circumstances in which an individual might be in excess of these immediate income guidelines, the HSE makes every effort to support applicants by taking full account of difficult circumstances such as extra costs arising from an illness, and it may exercise discretion and grant a medical card in such a consideration.

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