I welcome the suggestion by the Leader of the Opposition on the medical cards issue. The review of medical cards is unnecessary and I have made my view clear on this matter. Such a review gives a very false and misleading impression. As recently as yesterday evening at the Joint Committee on Health, representatives from one organisation alleged that the number of medical cards was reduced by 10%. Such a reduction in the number of medical cards would see 190,000 cards withdrawn. That is not the position. In fact, the number of medical cards has increased by 12.5% since 2011. However, the review of medical cards is causing unnecessary alarm. My argument is that if four out of 100 medical cards are withdrawn because of the change in the criteria, the unfortunate problem created is that the 96 people who retain their cards are convinced that someone tried to take their cards from them. I do not believe the current review is doing anything for anyone and it is not doing anything for the provision of health services. I say to the Leader of the Opposition that I was surprised to find that when we visited the PCRS in Finglas last week, there was no representative from Fianna Fáil.

The Senator's party is in government and it created the mess with medical cards. What is the Senator's point?

I am concerned that Fianna Fáil has such a strong opinion when there was-----

We have been raising the issue for the past two years.

Senator Colm Burke to continue, without interruption.

I do not see the relevance.

I did not interrupt the Senator.

Does the Senator have a question for the Leader?

There was no one there from Fianna Fáil. A number of very constructive proposals were raised at that meeting and these will help the situation. One of the proposals is that elderly people can nominate a designated person to correspond with the HSE on the review of medical cards.

They are called public representatives.

I mean a member of the family. I ask the Leader for a debate on the review of medical cards. We need to change the current system to ensure that unnecessary alarm is avoided. The current review is causing unnecessary alarm.

I agree with the point about the medical cards issue made by our leader, Senator Darragh O'Brien. While I appreciate that the Minister, Deputy James Reilly, is coming to the House today to deal with another issue, we want to discuss this issue with him. We commend the Minister because, unlike some of his colleagues, he always makes himself available for debates in this House. That is not an issue but we want him to come to the House to deal specifically with the review of medical cards. The PCRS is not doing its job correctly. Its ability to impress with regard, for example, to the five or six members of the joint committee who visited its premises to survey its work and who were shown around to prove how well the system works is a back-slapping exercise and it does not interest us.

It was not a back-slapping exercise. It was constructive. The Senator was not there.

Senator Marc MacSharry to continue, without interruption.

I did not interrupt Senator Colm Burke. The good reason I was not there is that we passed an all-party motion in this House that the Order of Business takes precedence over any committee work. That is the rule I followed. I ask the Leader to remind his junior colleague that the Order of Business takes precedence and on that day we were raising very important issues, one of which will be dealt with by a Private Members' motion on maternity services after the Order of Business this morning.

If Senator Colm Burke inquired from any of his defeated colleagues in Sligo, Leitrim, south Donegal or Roscommon, they could tell him that the medical card issue was the single most important issue on the doorsteps in those constituencies. That is why I and some of my colleagues did not engage in a futile back-slapping exercise. The people I listen to in the context of the review of medical cards are the elderly, the sick, the handicapped people and those who are terminally ill, who have informed me, first-hand, of the failure of the system. Therefore, I have no interest in wasting resources and taking these people from their work to facilitate a media exercise to try to make a failing Minister and Department of Health look better. I look forward to that debate and hope it can be held as early as possible. The Minister is coming to the House today, but we need a debate on this issue which, with maternity services in the north west, is probably the reason Fine Gael and the Labour Party collectively lost 160 seats nationally.