EU Directives
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-09
============================================================

Shane Moynihan (FF), Dublin Mid-West

I thank the Minister for her response, in particular on the process change. If possible, will the Minister tell us if there are particular processes the HSE has identified which it thinks could be changed to speed this up? I am always reluctant to say we need to throw more staff at a problem, especially when it is administrative, because, as the Minister said, more often than not a system change is needed or there are unnecessary barriers in processing which cause delays.
I fully accept the Minister's point that the directive is European legislation but the European legislation did not envisage it would take six months to reimburse an application. In that vein, is there any consideration that can be given internally for the HSE to look at what it might to do remediate and compensate the people who, through no fault of their own, are left to pay large amounts of interest they did not envisage when they took out the loans? That was not an expectation of the scheme when it was set up. It certainly was not the expectation of the patients when they applied for the scheme but, with all due respect to all involved, the HSE is the one at fault for the delay. There should be some indication or signal from it about how it might compensate or at least take account of the fact that the interest accrued or credit facilities people took have given rise to additional bank charges on the fees.
From a human point of view, families who have gone through the stress of having to travel abroad to get a procedure are expecting reimbursement. Six months down the line, they have not been reimbursed and are hit with extra interest or bank charges. This was not envisaged by the European legislation. I fully accept the point on flexibility and the parameters but given that this is a process issue related to the administering of this scheme, will the HSE look at compensating for or taking account of that in the reimbursement process?

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-09