Dr. Bridget Johnston:

I apologise that I left that note off. The percentages actually drop when we look at the figures of those with no coverage. There was 15% of households within that breakdown that could not afford their healthcare. In 2009-2010 it was nearly 13% of households that could not afford their healthcare expenditure, which was their out of pocket charges and their private health insurance premiums. The figure was 12.2%, which is illustrated in the yellow section of the document I provided. This means they had no coverage, neither a medical card nor private health insurance. This figure dipped to 9.8% in 2015-2016. This dip comes with a huge health warning, however, because we what we are really capturing is the huge amount of unmet need. Most households cannot even afford to put themselves into financial hardship because they do not have the money to spend on private care or insurance premiums. We have good evidence to support the fact that unmet need is growing in Ireland. A recent survey found that Ireland now has the second highest rate of unmet need for healthcare in the EU with 40.6% of adults over the age of 15 saying they had an unmet need for healthcare in at least the last 12 months due to cost, distance or waiting lists. Only Latvia is higher than us now.