Gabrielle McFadden (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

May I ask about the private health insurance? I know it was touched on earlier. Can I ask which hospital is owed the largest amount of money and what exactly the HSE is doing to recoup that money? I ask because I know Mr. O'Brien said that there was €150 million outstanding. Again, if that was a business it would have closed by now. I work with excellent people in the HSE - I have to give credit where credit is due - in the midlands and they do their damnedest to support me and to help me to provide services for people that I am looking after, but when I look in my constituency for a service for a person with, for example, intellectual disability and physical disability, nine times out of ten there are budget constraints. There is always a point at which someone will say, "We would like to do that for you, Deputy McFadden, but we cannot because we do not have the budget." Yet there is €150 million floating out there that has not been collected. I would like to know what urgency there is with regard to collecting that money, because if I went to an accident and emergency unit with my daughter I would get a bill for whatever it is - €100 - and I would be chased by the hospital for that €100. Why is the HSE not chasing private health insurance people and getting that €150 million, which could go towards helping with budgets for people with disabilities so that they can be kept in their own homes? I know a person who cannot get funding to go into a residential unit that he wants to go into. He is in a nursing home because there is no money for him, yet there is €150 million floating out there that is not collected.