Elderly protesters vow to tear up means test forms

OLDER people have vowed to tear up forms for medical card means tests and not give a single vote to Fianna Fáil and the Green party in next year’s local and European elections.

The partial climbdown by the Government on the medical card issues failed to calm the anger among older people who will hold a protest outside the Dáil this evening.

A group of about 2,000 elderly people gathered for a public meeting yesterday to express their fury at the Government and said they want medical card plans in the budget completely abandoned.

They are also planning to bombard the constituency clinics of their local Fianna Fáil and Green TDs to push for the retention of universal medical card coverage for everyone over 70.

More than 30 people spoke at the meeting, organised by Age Action, and said the Government announcement yesterday was “just a sticking plaster” to “save their own necks”.

Junior Health Minister John Moloney was booed for a full five minutes and had to leave the stage without being able to speak on behalf of the Fianna Fáil party.

Progressive Democrat Senator Fiona O’Malley was also heckled when she addressed the meeting and refused to sign a petition presented to her by one of the protesters.

The meeting was moved from a hotel in Dublin city centre to St Andrew’s Church in order to accommodate the huge numbers.

Among the older people who spoke, Margie Parker said: “I only have one word to describe this move and that is euthanasia. I am so, so mad.”

Bob Waddell, who is 71 and paid tax for more than 50 years, said: “We’ll tell them now. In the next elections, there will be no votes for Fianna Fáil councillors, no votes for Green councillors whose party is sitting on the fence.”

Alyce Noonan told the meeting: “We paid the highest mortgages on our houses, we paid the highest taxes to the Government and to quote two famous people Shakespeare and you know the other one: ‘We have done the state some service. And they know it.’”

Pensioner Billy Hennessy said: “When I was 18, I took the boat to Holyhead and worked on building sites in London. I got nothing easy. I came home and gave all my life to working and paying tax in Ireland.

“When I heard Minister Harney and the Taoiseach saying this cut was necessary, I thought it was outrageous.”

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny told the meeting: “Fianna Fáil in government have made the greatest political blunder in Irish political history to wound, hurt and offend the elderly of this country who have built up this nation, who have sustained it in bad times, who paid 20% interest rates, who paid for the education of their children and who were given, at the end of their days, a right of free health.”

Labour party leader Eamon Gilmore said the partial U-turn was not good enough.

He said the over-70s “worked hard, paid their taxes, played by the rules and simply want to have the peace of mind that if you feel ill some morning, don’t feel the best, that you can go to the doctor, get your prescription and get looked after”.

Independent TD Joe Behan who resigned from the Fianna Fáil party over the move last week, attended the meeting, as did Independent Finian McGrath, who withdrew his support from Government this week.

Government chief whip Pat Carey later criticised the heckling of Mr Moloney.

“I think it’s better in a democracy to hear different points of view,” he said.