Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

The Sinn Féin Members fully support this motion opposing co-location and emphatically reject the Government amendment. It is a sad day for Irish democracy that a policy that is so wrong and so widely rejected should still be pursued in this manner. It is also sad and disgraceful that the Green Party and Independent Deputies who expressed strong opposition to co-location are now likely to vote for it along with Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats.

The Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats-Green Party Government is ploughing on regardless with its disastrous private for-profit hospital co-location scheme. This plan must be stopped before it is too late. It is the biggest single step towards the privatisation of our public health services. It has met with widespread opposition, both from within the health services and from the wider public.

I welcome the efforts of patient and community groups which yesterday highlighted the fraud carried out by the parent US corporations of private health care companies benefiting from Government money in this State. These companies are lining up to profit from the co-location scheme. They have also been given lucrative HSE contracts for cancer screening and cancer care. Quest Diagnostics Incorporated in Ireland is under contract with the HSE to carry out smear tests in US laboratories. From 1996 to 2004, it is reported that Quest Diagnostics Incorporated and its predecessors in the US paid $175 million in settlements under the False Claims Act, involving, among others, charges for medically unnecessary tests and overcharging for prostate cancer blood tests. Laboratories in Irish hospitals are being closed to give business to privateers such as this.

At the heart of the Government's policy is a glaring contradiction. On the one hand, it is removing services from local public hospitals on the spurious basis that they do not have the critical mass of patients to sustain them and, on the other, it is giving tax subsidies and access to land to private hospitals to provide services on a for-profit basis. The co-location plan is being carried through by means of coercion. The board of Tallaght Hospital was, despite the Minister of State's denial here this afternoon, presented with an ultimatum to accept co-location or to go without the additional beds needed. This is an outrage.

Sinn Féin Deputies will today and everyday continue to oppose this plan and the privatisation of our health services. Accordingly, I welcome and look forward to supporting the Fine Gael Private Members' motion as tabled.

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