Michael Harty (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Senator Burke has spoken repeatedly about a scheme to take blood tests for haemochromatosis in the community as opposed to patients going to hospital. It is substantially cheaper to do it in the GP setting but that never happens.

Deputy O'Reilly mentioned that the €700 million supplementary budget this year for the HSE was undoubtedly made possible by the windfall in corporation tax. If we are to depend on a windfall in corporation tax every year to bail out the health service, sooner or later that windfall will not happen. It is almost like depending on stamp duty, as we did in the boom times, to supply services. We are now depending on corporation tax, which is based on a few American companies operating in Ireland, and if Donald Trump were to change his policy in the morning, that could substantially change our income from corporation tax. While it goes into the general taxation pool, it almost mirrored the amount required to bail out the health service this year.