Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Will the Leader invite the Minister for Health to come to the House to deal with the issue of discretionary medical cards? All Members of this and the other House, local authority members and GPs throughout the State are aware of the extent to which the provision of such cards has been cut in recent years. We often hear the Minister boast that more medical cards are being given out than ever before, but the reality is different. I cannot understand the disrespectful and dismissive manner in which the authorities are dealing with patients with serious medical conditions such as motor neurone disease, cancer, multiple sclerosis and other seriously debilitating illnesses. Health authorities traditionally had discretion to issue medical cards to such persons where their income was somewhat over the threshold to allow them to meet the increasing cost of tests, medications and so on as they underwent treatment.

This issue should be debated in the House. As a result of the cuts, there are only some 59,000 people now in receipt of discretionary medical cards compared with approximately 81,000 in 2010. Yesterday in Sligo a man in his 40s came to me in tears because his wife had been informed by letter that their discretionary medical card was being withdrawn. The Minister has confirmed in the other House that cancer patients will only receive medical cards under the discretionary arrangement if their condition is terminal. As I am sure Senator John Crown will agree, it is often very difficult to confirm whether a particular cancer diagnosis is terminal. To deny authorities the ability to give medical cards on a discretionary basis for seriously debilitating diseases means that large numbers of people are falling between two stools. I am not saying a review was not warranted in the case of some of the 20,000 or so who have already lost their medical cards, but many are now caught in a terrible situation. The Minister's office is inundated with parliamentary questions on this matter from Members of the other House, as well as representations from Members of this House and others. It is a very serious issue which must be debated in this Chamber.

Will the Leader allow a debate on funding for the Road Safety Authority in the context of the criticisms by its chairman, Mr. Gay Byrne, and his call for increased Garda resources? The response from the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Alan Shatter, to Mr. Byrne's criticisms, as is so often the case with the Government, was to play the man rather than the ball. I call for a debate on these developments, including the Minister's remarkable response in tackling Mr. Byrne on a personal level rather than dealing with the issue, namely, a lack of appropriate resources for the organisation in question to do its work in the best possible way.