Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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She ended up in the private wing of a public hospital. She went in through accident and emergency and was brought up to the private wing. She now has a debt collection agency chasing her. The woman has a medical card and should not have been brought into the private wing. We spoke about similar scenarios when we were discussing women who went for private tests in the context of CervicalCheck and the Minister confirmed that even if a woman had a private test, she could go back into the public system. This woman, through no fault of her own, was filtered back into the private system and now has an outstanding bill and is being pursued by debt collectors. Nobody in the debt collection agency cares about the fact that the woman has a medical card, or about her means or her capacity to pay. All those in the agency care about is recovering the debt. I believe the use of debt collection agencies should cease because it has no place in the public health service. No compassion is being shown to this woman. When a case goes to a debt collection agency, it is taken out of the public system. A debt collection agency is just a company that is interested in recovering a debt; it does not care how the debt was incurred.