More than €8 million has been overpaid to family doctors in respect of so called "ghost" medical card holders, according to latest Department of Health estimates.
The latest figures, which are €2 million more than estimates of six months ago, were presented to the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee yesterday.
Outlining the up-to-date position, the secretary general of the Department of Health, Mr Michael Kelly, indicated he will be meeting the Irish Medical Organisation, which represents the doctors, next week to discuss ways of recouping the money.
This could be difficult as the doctors do not accept they were overpaid. The Department, he said, had recently obtained the advice of senior counsel in relation to recouping the money and it is now being considered.
"Our consideration is informed by the knowledge that any attempt at recoupment is likely to be challenged in the courts and we acknowledge that great care needs to be taken on how to proceed from here," Mr Kelly said.
"Any steps taken in this regard will need to be proofed against the probability of legal challenge. The IMO have already indicated that they will resist any attempt at recoupment. Subject to clarifying legal issues, the Department's intention is that full recoupment will be pursued. I will be formally notifying the IMO of this when I meet with them in the coming week," he added.
He went on to reveal that a cleansing exercise carried out on the medical card database had now resulted in the names of more than 80,000 patients over the age of 65 being removed.
He said not all of these would have generated an overpayment. The majority were removed because they had died or moved to another health board area. Some 28,156 names on the GMS register which should not have been there had resulted in overpayments to GPs of a total of €8.294 million, he said. The bulk of the overpayments was in respect of patients over the age of 70 before the free medical card eligibility was extended to all over 70s in July 2001.
Earlier this month Prof Niamh Brennan, who was author of the Brennan report which examined Government spending on health, was criticised by GPs after she told a doctors' meeting in Kildare that refusing to pay back the alleged overpayments would "amount to a fraud on the public purse".