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STUDENTS AND PEOPLE under 24 will be entitled to half-price fares on public transport from tomorrow.
The reduced fares were announced as part of Budget 2022 and apply to journeys on Dublin Bus, Iarnrod Éireann, Bus Éireann, Luas, Go-Ahead and Local Link.
Student Card Holders will automatically be charged the lower fares from tomorrow. Anyone else under 24 will have to apply for a Young Adult Leap Card to avail of the cheaper prices.
The 90-minute fare is now €1 for students and Young Adult Leap Card holders.
Customers aged under 19 already benefit from the Child 16-18 Leap Card, which is valid up to the day before their 19th birthday.
In a press statement, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan said: “When I announced a permanent 50% fare reduction for young adults in Budget 2022, I really wanted to make public transport more attractive for young people, so that using public transport could become a habit of a lifetime.
“I also wanted to go some way to supporting young people, by making day-to-day life a little bit more affordable.
“This fare cut is unprecedented and quite radical. But I believe strongly that it’s the way we need to go if we are serious about putting low-carbon transport at the heart of our efforts to build a sustainable future and if we want to bring people, and particularly young people, with us on that journey.”
Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth Roderic O’Gorman added: “The 50% across-the-board cut in the cost of transport fares for young people will have a real and positive impact for so many. I’m thrilled to see this going into effect, especially as this is an idea which came from young people for young people. I want to thank the members of Comhairle na nÓg for their campaign to reduce transport fares and I’m delighted to join Eamon in delivering on this for them and all young people.”
A 20% reduction in the cost of Dublin’s public transport fares took effect from Monday and will remain for the rest of the year.
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Dear ‘Irish Patient Association’.
The correct spelling of the word is ‘Families’, not ‘Familys’.
I’m starting to lose faith in the human race… I genuinely am.
There are some uneducated gombeens out there.
The brutal truth is vast majority of patients going to GPs don’t really need to be seeing a doctor. Anxious mothers bringing little johnny and Mary in for a check up when the fact that little Johnny and Mary are running around shows they don’t need to be anywhere near a doctor. Then you have elderly people who come in every week just needing a chat. Truth is the country would get by just fine with a more efficient GP service, and indeed fewer of them.
@Fred Jonsen: And what about hard working people with families who defer visits to a GP because of the costs. Then who later suffer from conditions that should have been diagnosed and referred to consultants who then tell them they should have caught the problem earlier? That is the reality for many families when cash is tight. Your badly conceived concept of pensioners going for a chat and people wasting GPs time is the sort of rubbish we expect from you in whatever weird parallel hateful universe you exist in.
@Fred Jonsen; you can’t expect a non medical parent to Triage their childrens symptoms and signs, and decide on appropriate course of action..
How much does a GP get for each citizen registered with them?
@Eddie O’Neill:
I would imagine that greatly depends on where the practice is.
442 might be a valuable practice in D4 but 1,200 could be unviable in a rural location.
@P.J. Nolan: it doesn’t, they only get paid by the state based on the medical card patients they have, it’s somewhere between €90-€120 per patient per year regardless of how often the come, can’t remember the exact figure
@Kim Jong Coin: I think that flat fee only covers,say six visits,after that it’s something like €21 or €22 per visit
@Kim Jong Coin:
Correct, the medical /GP card patients are based on a fixed fee per year but people that have these cards are much much more likely to repeatedly visit the doctor so the margin per patient will be a lot higher in D4
@Kim Jong Coin: Thanks Kim Jong Coin, so next question is how many of those 1200 patients on that GP’s books actually use the services of that GP in a given year.(Probably cannot be known but can anyone speculate)
Is the figure of E90 to E120 for both Medical Card Patients and Non, or is there a different payment for each?
Does that payment with respect to non-MC patients entitle them to any free visits or bloods for example?
I don’t begrudge a GP their salary or think that their skills were not hard earned but is there a more efficient way for the state to spend that money?
What is the states annual spend on GP fees?
Does a GP have other sources of income beside the state payment for patients, I presume home visits is 1 source, how much does a home visit cost?
@Eddie O’Neill: it depends on age and gende rofnpatinet but basic payment of about €70 per medical card payment no matter how many times they visit per year.
Previous research suggested the average private patient attends 2.2 times per year, the average medical card patient attends 5.5 times per year.
There is NO payment for daytime house calls. This policy has effectively stopped house calls as zero payment is not only non viable but damaging to a medical practice. Many patients are told to go to the Emergency department directly coding the state thousands of euro per patient.
A salary for a GP is usually made from the about hourly private patient that attends (very variable and dependent on area. A lot of expensive bills and tax of course still must be paid from this)
Many GPs stop taking on medical card patients at a certain number as it is just not viable at current payments to care for more.
@Ranty McCrank: Thanks Ranty, very interesting, great name and avatar by the way.
The GPs remind me of the farmers, in that they endlessly complain about how they are in a constant financial crisis. And yet there is no way on Earth that GPs will give up their medical card practice. And it is nigh on impossible for a new doctor to get onto the closed shop that is the medical card panel. And almost all GPs are Irish. Because the truth of the matter is that the medical card delivers a very healthy cheque each year to the GPs and the pharmacists too. And is there anywhere in the country a GP of non-Irish nationality with his/her own practice? Or two?
@Lovely Man: almost all gp’s are Irish because doctors aren’t enticed from abroad due to the FEMPI cuts. On the contrary, the amount of Irish gp’s leaving Ireland is staggering. To clarify another error in your statement, any doctor qualified in general practice can have a GMS panel list so it’s not a ‘closed shop’. Relative to the job that they do , GP’s are extremely good value for money. That is true.
@Lovely Man: yes the third of newly qualified GPs and indeed older established GPs that take themselves and their families to leave for Canada, Australia and New Zealand are putting on an amazing act to pretend GP in Ireland is non viable.
@Lovely Man: yea loads. Many GP’s just set up in private practice because medical card patients not viable. Seriously €70 per year for average 5.5 visits!!! €12 per visit, same as packet cigarettes!! You called out a Plummer recently?. And remember that €12 is before costs!!
@Lovely Man: Sorry to say to you but your comments are very poorly researched and factually incorrect in the main- and I am neither a GP or a farmer…What do you derive your income from? Because unless you have milk, bread, butter etc on your table in the morning, and hopefully neither you or any of your family become unwell, ill or have an accident/mishap- in which case you might just Not be able to get to Work and earn that income. Haven’t you heard of Interdependence within the human race? Yes! We all need each other…so stop knocking other professions/occupations…
Wait until they have to deal with abortions- you think a waiting time is bad now.
@murt de murty: fake news! Try again
Be great if you could actually read the report. Can’t see a thing.
In 2015, the fee varied from 43 euros to 434 euros per patient, depending on age and circumstances, per Dept, of Health site.
EM?? How come there are so GPs from Walkinstown, Crumlin on the Dublin South west list? Thats not Dublin South West??
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