Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We have had this discussion a thousand times with the Deputy. There are cases where a salary of that level is justified. It would be very hard to have consultants of the highest calibre in the hospital system. We are attracting people from the Mayo Clinic or the best hospitals in the United States or Canada who are earning multiples of that. If we were to restrict pay to that level, what the Deputy is saying is that we would not have a public health system.