Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has described as "harassment" the repeated review of discretionary medical cards, especially for elderly people.

He acknowledged there was a problem in the way discretionary medical card reviews were being carried out, but said 96 per cent of those reviewed kept their cards.

Mr Gilmore told the Dáil a better way had to be found to conduct reviews.

He was responding to Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher, who said more than 30,000 people had lost their discretionary medical card.

Acknowledging there was a problem, Mr Gilmore said “in particular for older people, it constitutes a degree of harassment where somebody receives letters again and again within a very short period of time essentially asking the same questions”.

He said after a review "there should be a freeze on that person being reviewed again for a period of time".

Appeal the decision
He also said that when a medical card was being withdrawn "a reasonable period of time should be given to that person to enable them to appeal the decision and to make a case if there are exceptional circumstances".

He cited a case where a medical card was withdrawn when a person had moved to a nursing home. “Clearly that could be established by a small additional inquiry.”

Mr Kelleher called on the Government to reverse the cuts to medical cards, and said it was unfair to ask “the oldest and the sickest to pay free GP care for those under the age of six which will, in many cases, be given to healthy and wealthy people”.

He said it was Government policy and written in the HSE service plan to take the medical card from the oldest and the sickest in society. The plan stated that the HSE would reduce the number of discretionary medical cards while announcing that €35 million would be ringfenced for GP care for those under six.

Mr Gilmore rejected the claim as a “distortion of the facts” and said the free GP care for under sixes was “additional funding which was provided for in the budget last year”.