Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Yes, it does. The unfair two-tier system that has determined the course - and many of the problems - of our health service for many years is simply not working. It does not work for people who cannot afford private health insurance or who find themselves at the back of the queue for consultants' appointments. It does not even work for those hard-pressed families which struggle to pay for private health insurance, only to find - as every Member of this House who pays into the group scheme knows - that their premiums are increasing each year while their benefits are going down.

When the Labour Party first proposed universal health insurance as a means of reforming both access to the health services, and how those services are funded, public health spending stood at €7.2 billion. Six years later, in 2007, it had grown by €6.5 billion. It is, therefore, the most expensive in our entire domestic budget. As the Deputy is aware, reform is never easy and it has been made harder by the fiscal crisis which we have all been obliged to endure and which continues. The boom demonstrated that one can keep investing money in a broken system but that if one does not fix the root of the problem, very little will change. This is the first Government to face up to fixing the root of the problem and to agree to develop a universal, single-tier health service. It is also the first Government committed to a system that will guarantee access to care based on need, not income. Furthermore, it is the first Government to commit to universal general practitioner care because that will incentivise the delivery of care early and, therefore, more efficiently. In the coming weeks the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy White, will be bringing forward the legislation necessary to allow for GP care, without fees, for those under six years of age.

The publication of the comprehensive White Paper on universal health care is an essential step in this direction. There are many questions which, by definition, cannot be answered in an optimum way until we have completed the consultation process. As a result, it is not possible to provide answers to the questions the Deputy posed with regard to what might be the cost of universal health insurance to different categories of people three or four years from now. There must be clarity. The purpose of publishing the White Paper is to facilitate an informed consultation process. People in this House and throughout the country are concerned about the quality of care available, on the one hand, and the crisis affecting the health service, on the other.

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