Seanad debates

Wednesday, 7 May 2014

2:40 pm

Photo of John KellyJohn Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Earlier today I heard calls from the INMO for the lifting of the moratorium on recruitment. It is now time this is done. I have raised this issue ad nauseamin the House in the past. Why do we have all of these problems with people losing their medical cards as Senators Henry and MacSharry have mentioned? Apparently there has been absolute bedlam at the primary care reimbursement service, PCRS, in Finglas for the past two years. People who work there are absolutely stressed out and cannot cope. What did the HSE due to address this? It brought in the Germans. Angela Merkel is now reviewing medical cards in the PCRS. It is as simple as that. This has not been mentioned in any debate on medical cards we have had so far in either House. Because of the moratorium on recruitment, the HSE has employed a German company called Arvato to review medical cards on behalf of the Irish people. This now overrides the recruitment process. It is quite obvious the company has absolutely no expertise in assessing or reviewing medical cards.

They have no compassion, which is obvious from the process of reviewing medical cards. Germans do not do compassion. The company has no knowledge of people's circumstances, particularly in rural Ireland, it thinks that a farmer with ten acres of land is a millionaire. In the past, medical cards were administered locally and people knew one another. People were granted a medical card by right if they were entitled to it and there were no problems. I ask the Leader to relay to the Minister, but I will mention it to him when he takes the matter I raised on the Adjournment, that there would be no need to create a third tier medical card if eligibility for the medical card was assessed locally by people who know the circumstances of the clients and none of these problems would have arisen in the first place.

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