Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

I move:

That Dáil Éireann, believing:

that the Irish people are entitled to a health service that will deliver excellence, equality and efficiency;

that a person's financial means must not be a barrier to him or her receiving the most appropriate and best medical treatment; and

that health must be treated as a community service;

expresses its serious concern at the growing pattern of privatisation of medical services under the current Government and the increasing trend towards reliance on for-profit medicine;

deploring, in particular:

the decision of the Minister for Health and Children and the Government to promote the building of private for-profit hospitals on the grounds of existing voluntary and public hospitals;

the continued use of tax incentives to promote the development of private super-clinics;

the increased use of beds in private nursing homes, for which no statutory scheme of regulation and inspection is in place; and

the running down of the publicly provided home help service and the decision to contract a US based company to provide home help services for the elderly;

calls on the Government to abandon this strategy as it will exacerbate the two-tier system of health care, whereas the goal should be to deliver an integrated service, and to:

move immediately to provide at least 1,500 community care beds for patients who currently and inappropriately occupy acute hospital beds;

publish a coherent programme for investment in additional acute hospital beds in not-for-profit hospitals, as promised in the health strategy published in 2001;

mandate the Health Service Executive to pursue strategies that will make greater use of existing beds, including more ward rounds by consultants and better discharge planning;

abolish tax incentives for super private clinics and use the monies thus freed up, as well as lands on public hospitals, where appropriate, to construct community care facilities;

establish an independent inspectorate to implement a rigorous programme of inspection in all nursing homes and community care facilities; and

invest in a modern home help service and establish a programme to train and employ a significantly greater number of public health nurses whose services are so valuable to elderly patients.

I wish to share time with Deputies Howlin and Costello, by agreement.

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