Eirin needs 45 syringes a day but has lost her medical card

Eight-year-old Eirin Nolan O’Connor is profoundly disabled and in constant chronic pain, needing up to 45 syringes and 18 boxes of medication a day — yet the HSE believes she doesn’t deserve a medical card.

So severe is her pain that, for the past six weeks, she has been receiving palliative care at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, where she is dosed with morphine. Even then, the pain is so excruciating that Eirin is self-harming, banging her head off objects in the hope that it will dull the pain.

It has been far from easy caring for Eirin, who can’t walk or talk and has global developmental delay. But mum Lydia, who is 37 weeks pregnant, says she and husband David have battled on. All that resilience evaporated yesterday when a letter arrived, informing the family that, instead of the medical card they have held since their eldest daughter was born, they will have to rely on a GP card.