Despite the offer of a compromise in the row over medical cards by the Taoiseach last night, the fallout from the plan to bring in means tests for people aged over 70 years, continued today.
Mr Cowen last night offered to engage in talks with the medical profession to establish if the Government's scheme could be modified.
However the Minister for Health and Children Mary Harney today said the Government would not be rowing back on its decision to abolish the right to a medical right for people over 70.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio's Marian Finucane programme, Ms Harney said the Government had not made the decision “blindly” and would not be changing its mind.
“I don’t think someone like me should get the medical card for example. The automatic right to a medical card for the over 70s regardless of their means has been removed. The Government will not be changing that decision,” she said.
Ms Harney said she accepted there had been a “major communications confusion” over the issue.
“Everyone thought they were going to lose theirs. 80 per cent of over 70s will keep their card,” she said.
Speaking on the same programme, Wicklow TD Joe Behan who resigned from the Fianna Fail party yesterday over the issue, appealed to the Taoiseach to back down but expressed little hope that Mr Cowen would do so.
“I don’t think he is going to back down and I think the stakes are rising every minute,” he said.
Other backbenchers, together with Green Party and Independent TDs, have also called for a climbdown on the issue.
Speaking on RTÉ's Nine O'Clock News last night, the Taoiseach said the Government would set up a process to see how it could restructure the scheme to get a more favourable outcome. However, he made it clear that the principle of automatic entitlement of all people over 70 to a medical card would have to go.
The Irish Patients Association today welcomed Mr Cowen's announcement that he would consider renegotiating the plan but said it believed that all senior citizens should continue to receive a medical card.
"Again we re-iterate our concerns that any income group who has honestly earned their income be marginalised or isolated; this is undesirable and is not fair for any group, particularly those in the elder years," it said in a statement.
"This re-negotiation must be for all of our senior citizens' medical card entitlement," it added.
Elsewhere, the Labour Party said this morning that the Taoiseach's television appearance last night had done little to resolve the issue.
The party's leader Eamon Gilmore said today that Mr Cowen needs to deliver " a clear and unambiguous statement that the removal of the medical cards from those over 70 will not go ahead."
"This is the only way to remove the fear and anxiety hanging over the elderly," said Mr Gilmore.
He added that the aftermath of Tuesday's Budget had "turned into an unprecedented political shambles."
"This budget shows the extent to which Fianna Fáil ministers, many of them in power for eleven years, have lost touch with the public. They totally misjudged the public mood on the medical card issue. So incidentally did the Fianna Fáil backbenchers who gave Minister Lenihan a standing ovation onTuesday but who are now desperately trying to distance themselves from his proposals," said Mr Gilmore.
Fine Gael has also piled on the pressure on the Government by tabling a Dáil motion for next week calling for a reversal of the medical card policy.