Kenny ‘regret’ over medical cards

The Taoiseach has expressed "sadness" about the suffering of thousands of seriously ill and disabled people that arose out of the loss of discretionary medical cards, saying a review "got out of hand" and blamed "the computer".

Days after the Government said 15,000 people would have their cards restored in the next three weeks, Enda Kenny said the system was centralised “to bring equality to it”. However, he said: “The computer doesn’t have nature.”

Mr Kenny, who consistently denied the problem over the past year — despite a number of cases being reported since October and raised regularly in the Dáil — said he regretted what happened. “I react with sadness that it got out of hand; it shouldn’t,” he said.