A range of income sources are excluded by the health boards when assessing medical card eligibility. Many allowances, such as carer's allowance, child benefit, domiciliary care allowance, family income supplement and foster care allowance are all disregarded when determining a person's eligibility. The guidelines are not statutorily binding and even though a person's income exceeds them, a medical card may still be awarded if the chief executive officer considers that his or her medical needs or other circumstances would justify this. The health board chief executive officers have been reminded annually by my Department and me that medical card holders should not be disadvantaged as a result of budgetary increases in social welfare allowances.