Medical cards: Staggering political ineptitude

In what is clearly its most remarkable U-turn to date, the Government on Tuesday announced that it would return discretionary medical cards to over 15,000 people who had them removed between July 2011 and May 2014.

That they were taken away in the first place suggests a heartless disregard for those already forced to struggle with the twin evils of grave long-term illness and severe financial constraints.

It also reveals a political ineptitude of staggering proportions and an administration so obsessed with balancing the books that it has lost touch with those who elected them.