Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

The Government still does not appear to understand what has happened among the general public. It has lost the trust of the people. We have just heard further lectures about getting through this and about patriotism, but it was the Minister for Finance who introduced the idea of patriotism in his budget speech. The concept of universalism was a concept endorsed and put forward by many of the illustrious predecessors of the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, in the Fianna Fáil Party.

The Government no longer has the trust of the people. Despite the fact it has rowed back considerably today, if any of the Government side had been in St. Andrew's Church in Westland Row today and listened to the more than 2,000 people who were there, they would know the people are not at all satisfied with what has been announced. They no longer trust the Government. They know that despite the fact the limits have been upped, once universal entitlement has been removed any Minister can, with one stroke of a pen, reduce the limits and exclude more people.

The people know too that the figures do not add up. The Minister said the measure will only affect 5% of the elderly, but the figures on savings do not add up. The most the Government could save, by my calculation, is approximately €20 million. I do not know where the Minister will get €100 million from. She will not get it, judging by the figures available to us. We will have 330,000 over 70s entitled to full medical cards and 20,000 excluded. That will not bring about the savings mentioned. Therefore, people are concerned the Government will decide later that having talked to the doctors and not having got the agreement it wanted, it will say it is sorry but must now include more people. There is no confidence that the scheme will work.

The plan may work, save the backbenchers from revolting, keep the Fianna Fáil Party together and may hold the Green Party in Government, but I was on a radio programme yesterday with Deputy Gogarty and he said the scheme would have to be scrapped or the Green Party would not be happy. However, the scheme has not been scrapped and the concept of universalism is being removed. The Government may have managed to hold the Green Party and the Fianna Fáil backbenchers, despite what they said on the public airwaves, but it has not got the confidence and trust of the people. The Government will see this tomorrow when the protest is held outside the Dáil. I am certain it will be a huge protest and that people will not accept the Government scheme.

We have a Government that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. This is demonstrated in what happened to the health services in the budget. The Minister has said there is a 2.3% increase in the health budget, but that will not keep up with medical inflation, with already agreed pay rises or with our growing population. There is no doubt that health services will be cut and hit hard.

I wish to respond to the Minister with regard to what happened when universal entitlement was introduced by the former Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Michéal Martin. The objection of the Labour Party at the time was to the fact that doctors would be paid four times more for certain patients over 70s than for others and that this would provide an inequality of reward to doctors and would affect the way in which the population would be served.

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