Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Question 13: To ask the Minister for Health the estimated cost to his Department in terms of medical cards envisioned by the abolition of concurrent payments of social welfare in Budget 2012; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1281/12]

Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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As part of Budget 2012, a number of changes were announced in relation to concurrent payments of certain social welfare benefits. The changes relate to Community Employment schemes, the payment of two qualified child increases, and half-rate payments of Jobseeker's Benefit, Illness Benefit and Incapacity Supplement.

As the Deputy is aware, the decision to award a medical card is made by the HSE mainly on the basis of the means of the applicant, as set out in detail in the HSE's Medical Card/GP Visit Card National Assessment Guidelines.

The HSE expects to issue an extra 100,000 cards in 2012 but this is primarily due to the general economic situation and not budgetary measures.

While undoubtedly, there will be some extra costs in terms of medical card provision arising from social welfare measures, an accurate overall forecast is not possible due to the very wide variation in personal circumstances.

The impact of these measures is minimised however by the fact that in most instances the measures relate to new social welfare applicants only.

The impact is further mitigated by the fact that where the only income of an applicant is from social welfare, there is an automatic entitlement to a medical card. So many of the persons affected by the social welfare changes will already have medical cards.