John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We are all experiencing difficulties with HSE responses to queries at the moment, especially parliamentary question responses. One of those a colleague of mine submitted regarded the costs associated with reviews of medical cards for those over 70 years of age. The reason I am looking for the cost of doing those reviews for over-70s is that I estimate that more than 100,000 of those reviews are done every year, and by their nature people who are over 70 are on fixed incomes. Barring winning the lotto or starting a new job in their eighth decade, it is the same but it adds huge stress on those people in gathering all of the information together in order to submit for it to be reviewed, only for their medical card to be renewed again.

We all deal with those queries from people who are over 70 and, of course, reviews have to be done to ensure eligibility is still there. However, for that cohort of people over 70, I would seriously question the cost-benefit of doing so. Even if there are a few people - and I have never found one - who are over 70 and who have a medical card, and who lose it on review, one really has to question the cost of doing all of those reviews in the course of a year versus the savings that are made. As we cannot get the answers to those questions at the moment, I would like a debate in this House on other health matters, where I can raise this matter with the Minister and get the exact figures and costs that are involved in carrying out those reviews versus the savings that are actually made by the State. There are significant savings to be made that would assist in not putting older people under the pressure and stress that we do.