A campaign group, which has been fighting to ensure that all seriously ill children have access to medical cards, has said that it has received a ‘strong personal commitment' from the Minister for Health that all children qualifying for the Domiciliary Care Allowance will automatically qualify for a full medical card.

Around 33,000 children in Ireland are currently in receipt of this allowance. These children have already been deemed by the State to have a ‘disability so severe that the child requires care and attention substantially in excess of another child of the same age'.

Unlike the medical card, this allowance is not based on parents' means, but instead focuses on the child's lack of function of body or mind resulting from their condition.

Currently, children with life-long disabilities, life-limiting or life-threatening conditions that last for more than one year routinely qualify. While many of these have access to a medical card, a significant number - around 10,000 - do not.

The campaign group, Our Children's Health, was established in 2014 by Kevin Shortall and his brother-in-law Peter Fitzpatrick, after Mr Shortall had to ‘fight tooth and nail' for a medical card for his daughter who had been diagnosed with leukaemia.

Since then, it has been ‘relentlessly' campaigning for better access to medical cards for sick children. Earlier this week, the group met with the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, who gave a ‘strong personal commitment that all children qualifying for the Domiciliary Care Allowance will automatically qualify for a full medical card'.

This measure, he said, will be formally announced as part of Budget 2017 in October.

"New legislation is required and we were particularly happy to hear that the Minister is as eager as we are to ensure that this will be a permanent change, placed on a sound legislative footing.

"Once introduced, 10,000 children will benefit immediately from this move, but crucially, any child that is born with or develops a serious illness or medical condition in the future will in effect be automatically entitled to full and free access to all public health services," the group said.

It explained that Minister Harris said that his intention is for this to come into effect from early 2017 ‘or mid-2017 at the latest'.

"We urged him to do what he can to introduce the measure as quickly as possible, ideally from January 2017. We are still hearing week after week of children with complex medical needs that do not qualify under our current system," the group noted.

It emphasised the importance of this change, insisting that a full medical card is vital for these children so that they can access the supports, aids and appliances that they need, ‘many of which cannot be sourced or afforded privately'.

"For the first time, the child will be assessed in their own right, based on their medical need and not on their parent's means. For these children and their parents, this change simply cannot come quick enough," the group added.

For more information on Our Children's Health, click here