Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

I want the level of private activity in our public hospitals to be greatly reduced because the sole purpose of the public system is to serve the medical needs of citizens.

As to the question of which body should assess applications and so on and the conflict between being the provider of funding and the provider of the benefit, I am not aware of any health system, either publicly funded or funded through a social insurance model, which has unlimited resources.

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