Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

The Minister knows very well that the Labour Party policy is that there should be no two-tier health system and everybody should be treated the same way. We should not have private beds in any public hospital, nor should we have the kind of system we have at the moment. It is disingenuous to state, on the one hand, that I am saying the VHI should stay in public ownership, while, on the other, the Minister is somehow suggesting that because of that I support private beds in public hospitals. Has the Minister considered how she will end the two-tier health system whereby we have private and public patients?

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