Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, and I very much welcome the Bill. I was worried when I listened to Senator Horkan of Fianna Fáil because he was so negative I thought the Bill was being introduced to abolish the charges. I reassure him that the purpose of the Bill is to introduce medical cards for people who are in receipt of the domiciliary care allowance. A significant number of people will come into the scheme. More than 33,000 people are currently in receipt of the domiciliary care allowance. My understanding is that approximately 9,800 of them currently do not have medical cards and they will have an entitlement as and from 1 June. I very much welcome that.

It is important that we give support to families who have an extra struggle. Many families have a significant struggle despite the income they receive. This is a really welcome development and the Minister should be thanked for his considerable commitment to people with disabilities. The Minister for Social Protection has also ensured the measure would be introduced.

When we bring forward proposals, it is important that we look to the long term and what we can roll out in the coming years. My colleague asked what would happen when a child reaches the age of 16. That is a very valid question. As recently as last Saturday, I met a family whose child had just reached his 18th birthday and he no longer had an entitlement to respite care. That was a major concern for his parent. I had a long conversation with the parent who outlined that the child is very good in every respect but has an intellectual disability and requires 24-7 care. The parent said that when the child was under 18 and in receipt of respite care, she slept for a full two days because it was the only break she had as she has to look after her child night and day. That is an issue of concern. I welcome the proposal in that regard and I welcome the Bill. It is long overdue. It will help people who previously had to fight tooth and nail to try to get medical cards on discretionary grounds but were not successful and now they no longer have to fight that battle.

There are mixed views on the prescription charge. On the one hand, we are one of the highest consumers of medication according to the OECD.At present, we are spending about €2.6 billion - not million but billion - per annumon medication and prescriptions. Therefore, the questions must be asked as to whether all the medication is necessary and if there is a better way of dealing with it. The previous Minister, Senator James Reilly, introduced the scheme on generic drugs but I wonder how successful are we in that area and whether we need to do a lot more work. By saving money through the use of generic drugs and lowering the use of medication and drugs, we can use that money to provide additional services. We sometimes seem to forget that. I refer to a lady with a child over 18 years of age who cannot get respite care. If we could save €50 million in the cost of medication, that €50 million would go a long way to helping parents with children over 18 years of age who want to get respite care. It is something we need to consider when we look at issues such as this about long-term planning. I can see where people are coming from on the question of prescription charges but I can also see that we need to do more work on making information available so that people can see that using generic drugs is the same as using the patent drug but also that the use or over-use of some drugs is not wise. This is something we need to work on. If we announced a scheme in the morning where people could surrender any unused or out-of-date drugs, we would fill a lot of bins and containers with medication that could be disposed of. Many people would be embarrassed if they checked their medicine cabinets and saw what they have stored that is really out of date and has been there not for a month, two months, a year or two years but a very long period of time and has not been disposed of. We need a major education programme.

Anywhere we can save money in one area of health, without anyone being at a disadvantage, is of benefit to the people who have a disadvantage, particularly for those with disabilities and for elderly care. We need to work on this.

I congratulate the Minister of State on this. This Bill has the support of everyone in this House and, hopefully, it is just another step in helping families and people who have disabilities to get the same advantage as anyone else. I welcome the Bill and thank the Minister of State for bringing if forward.