Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

How can we maximise the potential of public landbanks on public hospital sites? Fine Gael has no problem with the principle of private hospitals being built on private sites and it is ridiculous for Government spokespersons to suggest otherwise. We have not been inconsistent at any stage in what we have said on this issue. However, we are strongly opposed to the sale of precious landbanks which could be used for the expansion of public hospital provision and which will have significant implications in the medium and long term for public health care and hospital expansion programmes.

As Deputy Enright noted earlier, in the same way that we encounter problems in finding sites for new schools, we could end up leasing precious landbanks for long periods of time only to pay out huge amounts of money to provide public hospital beds. That seems like mad logic. By facilitating the construction of additional private for-profit hospitals as a policy alternative to building public hospital beds, we are increasing the public's reliance on private health care provision. That will only serve to deepen the divide between those who can afford private health insurance and those who cannot and threatens to widen the already existing gulf between the quality of care a public can expect compared to the care received by private patients. Surely modern Ireland should aspire to something different. I urge the Minister to reconsider how the State can make best use of the available valuable landbanks on public hospital sites to advance health care provision and prioritise public patients.

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