Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

At the Irish Medical Organisation conference last weekend doctors committed to the public health service, as opposed to those who see health as a source of speculation or profit, raised strong questions on Government policy in facilitating private hospitals with generous tax breaks and other concessions. How does the Taoiseach answer the assertion from those who are deeply committed to public health care, backed by international and other sources, that they do not support the creeping privatisation of Irish health care that the Government is facilitating, either as the most effective use of resources or the best health care for patients?

The pernicious greed espoused by the Progressive Democrats as a recipe for Irish society, with the Taoiseach's blessing, involves a relentless, creeping privatisation in the health service. Witness the so-called Comfort Keepers franchise being brought in from America for old people. We used to think Colonel Sanders was responsible only for Kentucky Fried Chicken, but our old people are now to be put at the mercy of those people.

The Government is giving hundreds of millions of euro in tax breaks to profit-seeking speculators to build for-profit hospitals. How does the Taoiseach reconcile the fact that while the Health Service Executive says no more public hospital beds are needed, the Government is facilitating the creation of hundreds, if not thousands, of private beds? Is there not a contradiction there? Independent Deputies have frequently told me of their desperation in finding public beds for very ill constituents, and this brings home to us strongly that the thousands of beds cut by the Government's predecessors in the 1980s particularly need to be restored, especially in light of a greatly increasing population.

How does the Taoiseach answer those assertions and how does he justify those valuable tax breaks for private profit seekers to cherry-pick areas of the health service in which they want to invest with no plan or overall consideration for people, particularly those who are vulnerable and not wealthy, and the needs of the population generally? Does the Government not need to put in the necessary resources to provide the beds, long-stay care and step-down facilities, rather than facilitate private speculators in health care?

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