Professor Tom O'Dowd:

No, it has not, actually. I am aware of it. One can never get around the fact that talking about the Irish health service is a misnomer; they are Irish health services. People have voted to have a private and a public system. Even if one brings that in, one is bringing it in for less than 42% of the population. One is always dancing around this kind of thing. If one has a universal system - and I do not think it matters whether private insurers or a state pays for it - one can bring in things like that with less cost and more utilisation. At the moment, however, people mention it, but they do not mention the downstream effects of having this kind of system that people seem to want.