Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join in welcoming the Lord Mayor, Councillor Oisín Quinn, to the House. As a former Lord Mayor of Cork city, it is a huge honour to hold that office, whether one is Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cork or Belfast. Those are the only three local authorities that have and office of Lord Mayor. It is ten years ago since I was Lord Mayor . One of the programmes we have in Cork city is that the Lord Mayor visits every school in the city, of which there are 102, during his or her term in office. That was the tradition in Cork dating back to when Tomás Mac Curtain was Lord Mayor back in the 1920s, and he died in office. The Lord Mayor gave a half day to the schools on the day they called to them. The then Minister for Education, the former Deputy Dempsey, wrote to tell me that I could no longer use my role as Lord Mayor to grant that half day. I want to thank the former Minister, Deputy Dempsey, because as a result of the letter I got 15 television and radio interviews and a huge petition was taken up by the students in Cork city to tell the then Minister that we do not take diktats from Dublin down in Cork.

With respect to some of the issues that were raised, especially in regard to medical cards, there is a good deal of misinformation. It was sad to see a newspaper carrying a headline that there has been a 30% reduction in medical cards. That is not true. The correct position is that there has been a 12.5% increase in the number of medical cards issued, available and being used since January 2011. The total number of additional medical cards is 218,000.

Some 1.95 million people have medical cards or GP-only cards. However, there is misinformation. Alarm is being raised about the review of medical cards. When Fianna Fáil was in government, it gave medical cards to persons earning €5,000 a week. Anyone over 70 years of age and earning €5,000 a week was entitled to a medical card.