Marie Moloney (Labour)

I welcome the Minister to the House and thank him for his presentation. Unfortunately, I have only one minute to speak. I could speak about many things but I shall stick to the point.

I welcome the significant strengthening of the primary care services in the plan, including the GP visit card for long-term illness claimants. My only misgiving is that rich people suffer long-term illnesses too and some very wealthy people will now receive a medical card. The Minister could have extended the medical card to people with asthma, for example, or increased the guildelines or thresholds before adopting the measure.

As the Minister will know, there will a large amount of applications submitted under this scheme. We are not coping with the current amount of applications. The HSE may tell the Minister that there is a 15-day turnaround of applications but it is not happening. I understand that there is one deciding officer to deal with all of the appeals which are not linked with the primary care reimbursement centre. As a result it takes many months to link an appeal with an application. I know that I am beginning to sound like a broken record in the House by going on about this issue but it is one that causes a lot of problems. Some people must wait over 12 months for a medical card and that is unacceptable. I would appreciate it if the Minister could spend a few minutes telling us how he proposes to deal with the matter.