The Government will introduce free GP care for all children under five in the Budget tomorrow.

The initiative, which will be introduced next year, will cost €40 million and will benefit around 240,000 families.

Under the scheme , all children under five will be entitled to GP visits free but free medicines will not be provided.

The Government had promised that free GP care would be provided for the whole population by around 2015.

However, due to reported legal difficulties, earlier this year it abandoned plans to phase in this scheme initiallyfor  people with long-term illnesses.

The Government has now opted to implement free GP care on an age basis.

It will be the first major extension of medical card eligibility since the controversial provision of full medical cards to all over 70s a decade ago.

The under fives initiative, while it is likely to be popular, may, however, be funded by cuts in other areas of the health budget, including a tightening up of the medical card eligibility criteria for others.

The Government will also be criticised for introducing the under fives measure while taking away thousands of 'discretionary' medical cards from those with serious illnesses.

The under-fives medical card measure had been signalled for sometime, but there had been speculation that the initiative might be long-fingered due to cost concerns.

Despite the good news on medical cards, the health budget is still expected to be cut by around €300 million in 2014.

The doctors' union, the IMO, has already warned that the planned expansion of the medical card scheme to some categories of patient must not come at the expense of low income groups who rely on medical cards.

The expansion of card numbers to under fives may also lead to a clash with the IMO, which will be likely to insist that the initiative needs to be negotiated with GPs before it is introduced, on the basis that it will have resource implications for doctors.

However, the issue over whether GPs are entitled to negotiate fees under competition law is currently the subject of a legal case to be heard in the High Court in the new year.