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A plane flies past the moon in Loreto, central Italy, earlier today. Image: Alessandra Tarantino/AP/Press Association Images
HERE ARE THE things you need to know as we round off the day in three easy steps.
THINGS WE LEARNED
#APRIL JONES: The search for missing five-year-old Welsh girl April Jones will continue through the night despite harsh weather conditions, police have said. Detectives have until 5pm tomorrow to charge or release suspect Mark Bridger.
#ANONYMOUS: Finance Minister Michael Noonan has told the Dáil that there is no way to identify bondholders in Allied Irish Bank.
#GONE THE WAY OF THE INTER CERT: The formal Junior Certificate exams taken by Third Year students are to be abolished.
#DALKEY OIL: Drilling can now go ahead off the coast of Dalkey in Dublin after a licence was granted to Providence Resources by junior environment minister Jan O’Sullivan today.
#SPILLOVER: The civil war in Syria has spilled across the border for a second day in-a-row with Turkey’s parliament authorising military operations against its neighbour again today.
#FACEBOOK: Are you one of the one billion? Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg updated his status today to confirm that the social media site now has more than one billion active users each month. Like?
THINGS WE LOVED
Image: Niall Carson/PA Wire/Press Association Images
THINGS WE SHARED
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It was agreed in a meeting between the HSE and IMO, why didn’t the IMO tell their members?
I will wait for the IMO to come out and explain all this
Ridiculous that GPs can reinstate medical cards. They are hardly objective when treating their own patients and this approach results in the old system of he who shouts the loudest getting a medical card. Or as happened in FF’s time, you simply wrote to a TD to get a medical card.
2 million medical cards in the country. Onwards and upwards from here – let’s make it 3 million !
well done FG/LAB…you have even managed to make GPs look stupid – that’s not a good idea because they are not !
Please Sean just wait, the truth will out.
Great to see that Michael Healy Rae got his degree in medicine …. and he wearing the cap and all …humility on a grand scale !
I call BS, I work for a GP, we certainly have never heard of it….. But I could give lists of cases where people who really need and deserve medical cards are still bein messed about by PCRS…. So Varadkar now resorts to lies, one word comes to mind…. Disgusting…. The whole lot of them should be ashamed of the human cost of austerity forced into our most vulnerable. How many more people will consider suicide like that poor young guy in Galway? It’s really distressing listening to people who are already ill become hopeless in the face of the incompetent stonewalling of the HSE….
Cathy. My GP described this possibility to me last year. If he knew about it, I’m sure that your employer was also told about it.
There are stats on GPs using their reinstatment power…so clearly some GPs did get it. A chat with 50 GPs along the lines of ‘did you read such a letter in 2011-2012?’ does not go anywhere near a representative number of GPs in ireland (rep. about only 2% of them). So obvious some GPs did receive and read the letter…the lack of the latter being the most likely cause of confusion in this case.
My practice staff can confirm that not only could they not reinstate a card once it had expired, but when they telephoned the PCRS they were told that the patient would have to complete another application form regardless of their personal circumstances
We were promised it but it never happened. Another false dawn.
So not 1 gp actually read the agreement? Highly unlikely
Sorry, I can categorically state it was never said to our GP, do you not think that we would have used it for patients with cancer? Or an autistic child? It would have been used if it was policy….
Also, they are giving more discretionary powers to local HSE offices…. That’s the way it used to be done, ridiculous to wrap it up as a ‘new’ measure, it’s nothing of the sort!!!!
You’d swear they were gearing up for an election or something with all these ‘new’ anouncements.
Would GP’s have the same criterias as HSE and people would have to send their GP all the personal info re income and other data to be read? And if unfair dismissal of the card whom should one ask for a revision?
Is there any end to this government’s stupidity, even there “supposedly good news stories” are full of glaring holes and not properly thought out.
get’s broken down in the translation from German to English ….
Michael This does not hold true in the waiting room. Here we all wait and join the queue. If you ring to make an appointment you are given a time but when you get to the clinic you give your name at reception and you join the queue. It does not matter whether you are a private or Medical Card patient. Only Medical emergencies get priority and thankfully that is a rare enough occurrence. But otherwise you wait ….. and wait.
Plonkers!!
That’s given GPs a open check book – hey buddy come 1000 times a year
We are not paid per visit so that argument doesn’t hold up. I can state categorically that it is not possible to reinstate a medical card. I use the HSEs system and it doesn’t have this functionality. No circular came re this. Why would I spend previous time writing begging letters to the HSE if I could just reinstate cards with one click ?????
Point of information. GPs are paid an annual fee for looking after each patient regardless of the number of consultations. We don’t get paid per visit or house call during surgery hours. 2012 OECD data forecasted to 2014 after 2013 FEMPI will show us amongst the lowest earning GPs in the OECD as a proportion of average income. HSE administration amongst the highest earning.
These comments represent all regular GPs inhabiting planet earth. HSE comments must be referring to virtual GPs in satellite clinics.
My mother who is 83 and has very bad Dementia, has had her medical card removed. The forms to reinstate it would stop a qualified accountant in his tracks.
Surely to God Gov. knew this and if not why not. Imagine announcing something already in place whole Gov. should hang their heads in shame. How come Drs that knew about it didn’t say a word when parents came on radio/tv to appeal for help for seriously ill children.
Shame can be spread around on this one.
Do you actually believe government media releases. When were they ever fair or honest regarding GPs? I must commend their ability to produce black propaganda in order to distract attention away from reality.
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