Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I have no wish to hold up the House but, if I am correct, the Minister for Health launched a health strategy in 2001 in which he indicated that he wished to see 600 primary health care centres established. This was a core principle and one of the priorities of his health strategy to reduce the reliance on hospital services. The phraseology used was that this would be the vision for the future. A glitzy launch took place and Dublin Castle was hired for the day. It was flagged that there would be up to ten or 15 of these primary care centres in every constituency and one was led to believe that it was a very encouraging and positive development in the health service. Some nine years later we are led to believe by the Minster that there are only a handful of such centres in place but a further 200 are under consideration. This does not suggest the existing policy of the HSE has been spectacularly successful in rolling out a key objective of the Government's health strategy.

While we should wait to hear what the Minister for Health and Children has to say on the topic by all means, I do not see why we could not take some legislative power to determine if this could be encouraged by suitable tax reliefs. I believe the Ministers for Health and Children and Finance agree that they should have this weapon available for use. Either this is a genuine contribution to health economics and we are getting better value for the taxpayers' buck by having primary health care centres or it is not. The HSE has had nine years to prove the success of its strategy and it appears to have been singularly unsuccessful to date. While I am not a fan of tax reliefs for every Tom, Dick and Harry's project, there is a genuine case to be made that this measure could bring about more cost-effective care.

I acknowledge the point made by the Minister that one could get 12.5% tax relief if one were set up as a company. I am unsure if a sole trader would get the same relief, although I am informed by my accountant beside me that is the case.

There is a case for doing something to kick-start this. It is surprising that the Minister for Health and Children would be keen to promote this in an area where I consider it is wholly inappropriate, namely private hospitals on the grounds of public facilities, whereas an area that has been the bedrock of the healthy strategy of the party of the Minister for Social and Family Affairs for nine years is not touched and nothing was done to kick-start it. I would have thought we would better forgetting about the building of private hospitals and seeing could we leverage some private investment in this area where, traditionally, people have been satisfied with GP services privately provided. It is one of the successful parts of the health service where, generally speaking, public and private patients get access to care on an equitable and fair basis, even though some are paying and some are not.

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