Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

We will not agree on that.

I will deal with something else mentioned by Deputy McManus, namely, the privatisation of the health system. A total of 75% to 78% of the funding of health care is provided by taxpayers, while 22% to 25% is provided by private sources. That is in line with the OECD. It is not in line with the US, where the ratio is about 62:38 in favour of private funding.

I am being criticised about co-location, which was mentioned here again this morning. In our public hospitals, we have 2,500 beds which are totally funded by taxpayers. All the staff who staff those beds are paid for by taxpayers, while the diagnostics used on patients in those beds are supplied by the taxpayer. Yet only private patients can access those beds. I want to reduce the number of private beds in public hospitals by 1,000 and convert them into public beds for the use of all patients, yet this is supposed to be privatisation. It has been a long time since we heard the phrase "nationalisation", but, if anything, this measure is not privatisation. It is about converting publicly funded beds into beds for the use of all patients, not just those with private health insurance.

I want to co-locate on the grounds of public hospitals, eight of which are interested, facilities funded by the private sector with tax——

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