Doctors and health service management will attend fresh talks today at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) in a bid to end the stalemate over 200,000 doctor-only medical cards issued.
The dispute between the Irish Medical Organisation and the health service employers has delayed the issuing of the cards for nearly a year.
Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney promised last November to introduce them.
The dispute centres on how much GPs should be paid when the holders of the doctor-only cards reach the age of 70 and become entitled to a full medical card.
Under the current system family doctors are paid approximately 3½ times more for treating patients who with a medical card provided on reaching 70 than for seeing patients who already had medical cards on reaching their 70th birthday.
The IMO is seeking to have GPs paid the higher rate for seeing holders of doctor-only medical cards when they reach the age of 70. The Department of Health and health service employers are refusing.
Kieran Mulvey, chief executive of the LRC, held talks with both sides in the dispute last week, and the two parties are due to attend the meeting at the LRC.
Ms Harney has said GPs would not be granted a 9 per cent benchmarking award agreed at LRC talks earlier this year unless they agreed to the introduction of the cards.
Ms Harney warned recently that if the issue was not resolved by the end of the month she will explore other ways of paying for families on low incomes to visit their GP.