Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are 95,000 fewer medical cards today than there were this time last year. Am I correct that it is envisaged there will be 60,000 fewer this time next year? From whom will these be taken? I welcome the continuing row-back on the cut to discretionary cards. A man from Sligo suffering from cancer who also has heart issues applied for a discretionary card, which he had in the past, but was refused. We helped him to appeal it but it was refused again. I wrote to the Minister about it and he gave me one of the parrot-like responses for which I condemned Mary Harney and I will no less condemn the Minister for doing the same. It was a departmentally-generated parrot-like response which simply stated that under the Health Act 2004, the CEO of the HSE was responsible for the issue and the Minister will forward my representations to him for direct reply. We do not need a Minister if this is the case. I will write to the Minister again about it. I will not mention the person's name in the House. I do not expect to receive one of these parrot-like responses. Discretionary cards are available, but people with cancer and heart disease do not receive them. They do not have millions but they are marginally over the income threshold. To whom do we give discretionary cards and for what? My allocated time of eight minutes is not sufficient----