The chairman of the taxpayers watchdog has demanded the resignation of the Health Service Executive (HSE) boss and Department of Health Secretary-General.

John McGuinness told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that Tony O'Brien and Ambrose McLoughlin should go over their handling of the administration of the health service.

He highlighted the amount of paperwork people are being sent over medical cards and other issues and that he alone gets so much of it in representation from people, he has had to put a system in place to deal with it.

He says people have been failed by the health system over and over, no matter who was in charge.

It was earlier revealed that 1,190 discretionary medical cards were taken away since the start of this year.

The PAC heard that a total of 900,000 medical cards were up for review this year.

But the HSE was unable to say how many of these were of a discretionary nature.

The government has ordered the suspension of the review of the discretionary cards, pending new legislation to offer cards on medical condition rather than the cost of medication and treatment.

Meanwhile the Taoiseach said yesterday that he will investigate allegations some files used to make decisions about medical cards had gone missing.

Enda Kenny said he does not know why the Ombudsman would not be able to access the files used to make decisions on whether some people would have their cards removed.

His promise came after Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin raised claims the Ombudsman had found it impossible to adjudicate on some complaints made to him.

The Sinn Féin leader has said the coalition needs to state clearly that those who need medical cards will get them and government politicians need to make a clear statement on the matter.