Independent Ireland TD Ken O’Flynn has called for an immediate clampdown on the automatic allocation of medical cards to the holders of Ukrainian passports, which includes those who have arrived through the Beneficiaries of Temporary Protection scheme.
The Cork North-Central TD said that he has been informed by the HSE, following a parliamentary question to the Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, that the cost to the Exchequer of issuing medical cards to persons under temporary protection from Ukraine since 2022 has so far exceeded €92million.
In confirming the specific annual cost to the exchequer of the Ukraine Support Programme in the Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS), the HSE was able to state the following:
2025 as of September Year to Date: €25.03m
2024: €28.96m
2023: €24.2m
2022: €14.15m
The PCRS is the part of the HSE that is responsible for making payments to healthcare professionals, like GPs, dentists and pharmacists, for the free or reduced costs services they provide.
Deputy O’Flynn added, “Enough is enough. This level of preferential treatment must end. We cannot go on handing out medical cards to anyone who happens to arrive here bearing a Ukrainian passport, particularly when we know there are well grounded concerns that many of them may never have set foot in Ukraine in their life.”
“It is astonishing to me that medical cards are being given out in this way when we have thousands of older people at risk of losing their medical cards because the Government has raised pensions without adjusting the medical card income thresholds.”
“This problem has been ignored for too long. Worse still, the Minister’s reply to a separate Parliamentary Question of mine gives no commitment to protect pensioners from this outcome.”
“Why are our own pensioners and medically vulnerable cohorts subjected to endless reviews and income assessments when anyone can walk off a plane and claim a full medical card for a year without having to endure an equivalent assessment process?”
Deputy O’Flynn concluded, “It is time to get real and it is time to put an end to these kind of pull factors once and for all. We should be taking the tens of millions we are spending on handing Ukrainians free medical cards and channelling it into easing the burden on our own pensioners and our own sick who are undergoing profound levels of anxiety about the retention of their medical cards.”
More than 114,000 Ukrainians have been granted temporary protection in Ireland since March 2022, with an estimated 80,000 remaining in the country.