Almost 12 months ago I hosted in the AV room of Leinster House a group of consultants and sufferers of pulmonary hypertension. As the Taoiseach will know, given his profession, it is an acute illness of the lungs which causes breathing problems and leads to other ailments. To get through daily life, sufferers incur enormous costs due to the need for oxygen machines and medical prescriptions which do not qualify under the medical card. Will the Government recognise this illness as a long-term illness and, in so doing, allow people to get medical cards? I believe it can be done without imposing extra costs on the Department of Health.

There is a difference between the medical card scheme and the long-term illness scheme. The difficulty with the long-term illness scheme is that it does not have a statutory basis and, for that reason, it is not possible to add new illnesses to it without primary legislation, which would reopen the whole question of whether any of the illnesses on it should stay on it.