Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

It is going to cost the hospital system €145 million per year in lost income from insured patients. I ask the Taoiseach again, and I want him to provide answers, where will these hospitals be provided? That is not a hard question. Presumably the Taoiseach has been looking at this issue for the past couple of years. Will he give the House the list of hospitals that will be provided under this co-located proposal? We were told this would be a fast track. Will the Taoiseach give the House an estimate of the timescale for the building of these hospitals? I invite him to tell the House the cost of this proposal to the taxpayer and to the family that has health insurance. This plan of building private hospitals will end up being paid for by the taxpayer, through tax reliefs, and paid for by the ordinary families of this country, whose health insurance will be increased to pay for it. On top of that we will end up with a hospital system where one will go in one gate if one is well off and a different gate if one is not well off.

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