Máire Hoctor (Tipperary North, Fianna Fail)

The Health Bill 2008 gives effect to recent Government decisions to end the automatic entitlement to a medical card, irrespective of income, for people aged 70 and over and to introduce new arrangements in order that 19 out of every 20 persons who are 70 years and more will continue to have medical cards under a new income threshold.

For those who are aged 70 or more on 31 December 2008 and who have non-means tested medical cards, there will be no new means test. For those who turn 70 in the new year, there will be a much simplified means test compared with that applying for the standard medical card scheme, which has been designed to show that——