Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

As I said this morning, the passage of this motion will have far-reaching implications for health funding in the State and the health insurance of hundreds of thousands of people. The 25 minutes provided for this debate represents an outrageous insult to this House and to the people.

The Government is presiding over a shambles in our health services. Its fundamentally flawed policies and gross mismanagement of those services have meant that more and more people have had to — I emphasise that — take out personal health insurance for themselves and their families. It would not be their first choice. Many of these people are on relatively low and moderate incomes and do not qualify for a medical card, and they are concerned that if they rely totally on the public system, they will face long waiting lists and poorer health care outcomes. That is a sad indictment of the Government's management of the health services for the past ten years. People are paying on the double — let there be no mistake about that — for health care through taxation and private health insurance. As we have said here time and again, many people fall between two stools; they do not qualify for a medical card and they cannot afford private health insurance. That is the reality.

This motion approving the Minister's regulations will further hamper the VHI in the first instance and will undoubtedly lead to higher premia for people who are doing their business with that company. The wider recommendations of the Barrington report must also be mentioned in this brief opportunity. They are even more alarming, with the prospect of people being penalised for taking out personal health insurance later in life. Older people, people on pensions and in other circumstances, from their 40s onwards, will find themselves bearing an even greater cost to access health care in this State.

The implications of all that is before us are complex and wide ranging, yet we are expected to rubber-stamp this motion in less than half an hour. I note that another Deputy has arrived in the House so I will conclude by stating that we should be going in a totally different direction, towards a fully public system that is accessible to all on the basis of need alone and it should be paid for through fair and progressive taxation. That is the way forward, not this proposal or the type of system that the Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fáil would wish to foist on us.

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