Medical card loss sparks Dáil furore

The treatment of vulnerable people losing discretionary medical cards has been criticised by a back-bench Fine Gael TD during a Dáil debate which heard a number of cases where seriously ill children and adults had their cards withdrawn.

Cork East TD Tom Barry said he was “not a fan” of the new centralised process which had “removed local knowledge” from the process of deciding on cards and that people were confused.

“The time has come to define properly what a discretionary medical card is, because I’m not sure. We need to remove the lack of clarity in the area,” he said.