Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I do, a Cheann Comhairle. I did not mean any disrespect to any circus performers or others by the remark.

The Dutch model which is being promoted by the Government in this system has already been found wanting. It is one which has actually resulted not in a single-tier system but a three-tier system, with welfare recipients and those who cannot afford to pay becoming defaulters.

In essence, what is being proposed here is people being frog-marched into a system of private health insurance. The whole ethos is wrong. Only this morning the health committee was discussing the top-up payments to a number of medical staff in our hospitals, which are thankfully now ceasing. When we put down questions on that, the answers we got were that the hospitals put forward a business plan to justify those excess payments. Why would a hospital even have a business plan? Clearly, the whole ethos is about commodifying health rather than dealing with it in an appropriate manner. I do not believe that is acceptable.

In Ireland, families, at great pain to themselves, already pay thousands of euro in private health insurance.

We know that. Why do they do it? It is not because they are snobs who do not want to share a room with someone if they get sick. It is because they do not have confidence in the public health system and are paying as a way of getting their foot in the door. That is simply not acceptable but it shows that people would support a system where higher PRSI contributions were being paid in return for a properly funded public health system. This is not what the Government has on the cards with this proposal. In essence, what is at play here is making people pay at every level.

We need to go back and look at the British model because it has not been matched anywhere else in the world. Under this system, access is free at the point of care. About 60% of all institutional long-term care, pharmaceuticals, vision care and so on are all dealt with by the NHS. We need more investment in the precautionary levels of general practitioner services rather than just throwing people into the hospital system later on. However, a Dutch model and a compulsory insurance model with a population that is already failing to make ends meet because of years of austerity is not the way forward. It has been demonstrably shown that once one implements and gives over a service to the private sector, charges will inevitably rise. This is why Dutch families have found themselves done out of the market and in a far worse situation. This is a million years from the NHS or any idea of a proper publicly funded health system.

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