Prison service forced to clarify medical card claim

The Irish Prison Service (IPS) has been forced to clarify a claim by its director general that all prisoners are to be issued with medical cards on the day they leave prison, under a new agreement with the HSE.

Speaking at a conference in Cork, IPS director general Michael Donnellan said that, under the agreement, the cards would be automatically issued to all prisoners once they are released. He said the process had already begun at Cork Prison, where it would be tested “for the next few weeks” but he confirmed “it is going nationwide”.

“So, just over the last few months we’ve been negotiating with the HSE, so now we have a system in place where we can notify that somebody’s being released and that we’ll use their address of where they are going to and a medical card will be sent to that address, so on the day they get home there should be a medical card there for them,” he said.