Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Given that private health insurance is costly, is it not an expensive way of creating an assurance, perhaps not factual, that people can speed up their access through the public health system? We all get replies to parliamentary questions in which we are told that nobody can speed up the process. We do not want the process speeded up; we want it dealt with such that people are not forever moved from the back of the queue to the middle or the front of the queue but moved along the system. I have no ideological hang-ups, good, bad or indifferent. As far as I am concerned, the patient who requires treatment should have access to effective, second-to-none treatment as quickly as possible - and throughout the European Union, for that matter.

I emphasise that we need to get some evidence of that, otherwise large numbers of people will waste their money by providing for something they can get through the private system in any event. It is not clear why those patients are paying through the private system and going through the public system to ensure they can get through the public system quickly. It is an expensive way to go about it and it is a duplication that will cause snarl-ups in the system. Based on the examination of everything that happens in the system, has anything been discovered that we cannot see from our vantage point?