Ombudsman: Discretion narrowed for medical cards

There has been a "narrowing" of discretion in the issuing of medical cards but no evidence of maladministration, the Ombudsman said yesterday.

It emerged at this week’s meeting of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee that almost 1,200 discretionary medical cards have been removed since the start of the year.

Ombudsman Peter Tyndall said there had been a problem in getting information from the HSE to work out how a decision to remove a card had been made and why.