Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

There are others that are not included and entirely new ones have been opened. These include, for example, the new provision for private mental hospitals. The McCreevy one for the constituent in Naas is now being extended to allow money to go into building private mental hospitals. That seems absolutely remarkable to me. I know of no report or cost-benefit analysis on this. I have strong views on the question of the development of a parallel private health service based on the public hospital campuses. What is the basis of this latest provision? It is a new loophole, which is wide open in the Act. The money that is shut off in certain schemes will now flood into the new schemes. It is not just bright sparks; there are bright sparks working for the Taoiseach who know this. They have found it out over the years but they do not act on it.

The Taoiseach says the Government has made decisions on this, but the Government has only made such decisions as have been made as a result of the issue being raised on these benches over the years. For example, for the past five or six years, Deputy Burton has been pushing for the abolition of a tax exemption for stallion fees, which does not feature here. There is a paragraph saying "We will pass it over" but it has not been dealt with at all. The decisions taken by the Government are minimal and by comparing it to stamp duty, the Taoiseach pays serious disrespect to people's intelligence in this House.

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