Lobbying for medical cards

Sir, – Your political correspondent Harry McGee's report ("Taoiseach has made 330 representations for medical cards", November 23rd) on the amount of medical card representations made by so many TDs, is interesting but hardly surprising, as the practice is a traditional Irish way of circumventing official channels.

It might be much more enlightening if he could discover how many of these pleas succeeded where ordinary applications had failed to meet the required criteria.

– Yours, etc,

PADRAIG J O’CONNOR

Rathfarnham,

Dublin 14.