Madam, - The revised medical card scheme is still defective. The gross income limits, which appear generous, are not suitable for old persons. The income limits should be net, after allowable expenses, eg nursing home fees.
The formula used by the HSE to convert assets of the pensioner to a notional weekly income is totally inappropriate.
Many pensioners in private nursing homes, paying their own way at no cost to the State, are meeting the nursing home fees of sometimes €50,000 per annum out of their pension and the cash they have on deposit from the sale of their family home.
If they do not sell their €500,000 valued family home, that asset is not taken into reckoning by the HSE. But if they convert that asset into cash by selling it, the formula which the HSE uses converts that sum to being equal to an income of €1,632 per week, putting them way outside the limit for a medical card.
The problem is that the HSE is using a formula designed for another purpose and which has no regard for the fact that old persons often have to sell their family home to pay for their nursing home care.
The income limits for a medical card should be net, after allowable expenses, eg nursing home fees. - Yours, etc,
HENRY MURDOCH,
Glenageary,
Co Dublin.
Madam, - The Minister for Education did not explain in his announcement on education cutbacks last week what he meant when he said that in a "symbolic" move he was going to put fee-paying schools in a position where their teacher/pupil ratio was two points worse than in non-fee-paying schools.
For a rural-dwelling member of the Church of Ireland, the only symbolism that I can take from this move is that my children are to be discriminated against because of the faith I am bringing them up in.
The State funds a local Church of Ireland primary school, but there is no local Church of Ireland secondary school. If I want my children to be educated in a Church of Ireland ethos, or even a secular ethos, at secondary level I will have to send them to a fee-paying school.
It now seems that the State is to discriminate against parents in my position by funding fewer teachers at that school than at a non-fee-paying school, even though I am not being offered that option.
I think the Minister should clarify this is not the symbolism he intended. - Yours, etc,
JAMES SOMERVILLE,
Stratford-on-Slaney,
Co Wicklow
Madam, - Wouldn't it have been nice if some citizens who are over 70 came out and said, 'actually we don't need automatic entitlement to medical cards, because we are comfortably off and can afford to pay for healthcare.
At a time of economic crisis, we think it only fair not to put further pressure on the already over-burdened PAYE sector, and younger hardworking families"?
Would this not have been a spirited gesture, both patriotic and selfless? But instead we have a chorus of demands that the over-70s be allowed to keep their free medical care, regardless of their income or the cost to the exchequer.
Ireland was an old sow which eats her farrow, said James Joyce, and it looks as if little has changed. - Yours, etc,
EAMON DELANEY,
Phibsboro,
Dublin 7.
Madam, - There was so much in the Budget to be critical of and so many regrets at the failure by the Government to seriously tackle the economic problems in our society, the decision to unilaterally target the over-70s being perhaps the most cynical. However, I want to comment on one other aspect that has so far been seriously misrepresented in the media - including your own Editorial of October 15th.
The proposed levy on second homes, while in many ways a laudable proposal, will not go to the local authorities concerned as initially understood, but rather will be collected by them and paid into a central national Government fund. It will then be used to subsidise the cut in funding envisaged from the existing local government fund.
Using local authorities as the collection box for the national coffers is bad for accountable democracy and flies in the face of the recommendations in the Green Paper on local government reform published by the Government earlier this year.
If we are to ever have accountable, responsible local government we have to ensure that elected councillors will determine how such monies can be raised locally and then spent locally. Local authorities acting as the collector general for those in the Custom House and the Department of Finance in the manner proposed is bad for Ireland, bad for democracy, bad for responsibility and surely would be something that the Green Party would have once opposed. - Yours, etc,
Cllr DERMOT LACEY,
Donnybrook,
Dublin 4.
Madam, - Eight times during his Budget speech Brian Lenihan spoke of protecting the vulnerable in our society, yet the terms of that same Budget will totally undermine those agencies that are charged with the task of protecting the vulnerable.
What cant! What hypocrisy!
The funding for the Equality Authority will be almost halved and the funding for the Human Rights Commission will be cut by almost a quarter. Other measures will cause the virtual disappearance of the Combat Poverty Agency, the Office of Social Inclusion and the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Inter-culturalism. This is not only unfair and unjust, it is careless and uncaring!
We now have a Government that has firmly set its face against the development of a rights-based society.
Who will pay the price? There can be only the answer: the vulnerable in our society.
This Government is a disgrace.
Change can't come too soon! - Yours, etc,
ROBERT BALLAGH,
Dublin 7.
Madam, - Considering the amount of back pedalling that has taken place in recent days over the medical card debacle, are members of the Dáil now entitled to the new bicycle allowance as mentioned in the recent Budget? - Yours, etc,
CONOR BARRETT,
Hollystown,
Dublin 15.