Seanad debates

Wednesday, 9 December 2015

10:30 am

Photo of Paschal MooneyPaschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I ask the Leader to indicate when he intends taking the bankruptcy Bill which has been promoted by Deputy Willie Penrose. My understanding is that the Bill is to be published next week. Will it be a Seanad Bill or a Dáil Bill? I would like to think that we in the Seanad could facilitate a speedy passage for this very important piece of legislation.

I ask that the Minister for Health would come before the House and I propose a further amendment to the Order of Business that he do so.I had an experience in the past number of days in regard to an applicant for a medical card, a lone parent who has a very sick child and who applied for a medical card. That person has been told the time limit has expired, although I was not even aware there was a time limit, and will now have to make a fresh application, which requires a voluminous amount of documentation. This is a lone parent on social welfare with a sick child but the number of documents required in order to be considered is shocking. Not only has the person now been advised to apply again, three or four months after they applied, but they have to supply more up-to-date documentation and a repeat of everything they supplied before because the centralised medical card agency in Dublin lost the documents. Not only that, but when I asked, on this person's behalf, if they could have the documents returned, given these included a P45, of which there was only one copy, I was told the only way they could get the documents returned was by putting in a freedom of information request.

What sort of an inhumane system have we, as legislators, created? When the medical card system operated at local level, it was a very simple matter, as anybody in this House who has experience of it will know, in that one could get through to the person involved in the local office and he or she was able to sort it out. There were never difficulties surrounding medical card applications. I am appalled at the manner in which this applicant has been treated. A very inhumane system has been put in place. As a result, I have initiated through the Oireachtas Library and Research Service a full review of how these regulations came into place, who put them in place, what statutory regulations have been put in place and what are the legal requirements that mean a person has to go through the freedom of information process to get documents back.

I want the Minister for Health to come to the House. The buck has to stop with him because he is the person in charge, although he likes to think and to tell the general public that he is not in charge at all, that he is only passing through and that he is a commentator. Here is a situation-----

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