A Green Party TD has joined Fine Gael in rejecting the Taoiseach's pledge to reconsider the proposal to end universal provision of medical cards to over-70s.
Brian Cowen yesterday said the proposal would not proceed in its current form, which he said did not have "wider public acceptance". The Taoiseach is also facing growing disquiet among backbenchers over the plan.
Fine Gael's finance spokesman, Richard Bruton, today accused the Government of “pulling the mat out” from under elderly people who need secure access to health care.
“If there are savings to be made, I’m all for them,” Mr Bruton said. “But you can’t just trick around with people who are vulnerable in that situation and I think [the Government] have to just forget about this.”
Meanwhile, Green Party TD and sports spokesman Paul Gogarty has also called on the Government to scrap the medical card proposal.
Mr Gogarty wrote to the Ministers for Finance, Health and Arts, Sport and Tourism suggesting this option in what he called a bid to “end the fear, uncertainty and confusion” being caused by Government proposal.
“While the vast majority of over 70s are not affected by the revised Medical Card Scheme, the news has caused our elderly much pain and distress,” the Dublin Mid West TD
said. “At this stage it would be far better to abolish the proposal than to try and explain the intricacies and subject them to means testing.”
He said the Government should use €70 million from the horse and greyhound industry fund to cover the medical card scheme next year instead. The shortfall in funding for the horse and greyhound industry could be made up by imposing an increased betting tax, he said.
On the subject of the income levy, Mr Bruton said the Government were simply trying to modify a “bad proposal”.
Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan last night indicated the Government is prepared to review aspects of the controversial 1 per cent levy introduced in the Budget.
Mr Bruton claimed today Mr Lenihan had made "an awful mess" with the income levy. "I can understand the frustration of Fianna Fáil backbenchers because this budget is unravelling because it simply wasn't thought out," Mr Bruton told RTÉ's Morning Ireland.
“There are basic principles of fairness at stake here. You don’t tax the poorest and that’s what he did with the levy,” he said. “We thought the Budget was to protect the vulnerable and tax the fat cats and to protect the front line and save in the bureaucracy, and they got it the other way around."
Mr Bruton said voters were “waiting for genuine reform” and would have accepted a pay freeze for people over a certain income as Fine Gael proposed. “I honestly don’t believe that levies are the way forward,” he said.
The fact the Government was rowing back on the income levy and the medical cards showed "they are paring away bits of their Budget simply because they didn’t have the competence to put it together in the first place,” he said.