Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

Deputy Reilly is now the deputy leader of his party. In the Netherlands, everybody makes a co-payment, as he knows. No group, no matter how low-down the income threshold gets its care totally free, and everybody makes a contribution. Families at the bottom make a contribution in the region of €600 per year, which is far in excess of what is being imposed here. I shall be honest and say we would probably not be doing this if we were not facing tough financial challenges.

This morning Deputy Kenny raised the subject of the McCarthy report and said it had put up a plan of €1.2 billion in the health area. We have not gone for everything in the report. One of its recommendations was to tender for GP and dental services, where it was estimated there would be savings in the region of €200 million to €300 million per annum. We have not done that, but it may be something that will have to be considered.

The McCarthy report, as has been acknowledged, recommended a €5 charge per prescription, which would have raised considerably more money, around €70 million. What we are proposing to raise here is €24 million. The purpose of this is not to stop people taking their essential medicines. Again, a 1998 Dutch study - and I commend the Oireachtas Library for the great research it has done on this - showed that a small charge of €91 a year did not affect people taking their essential medicines and did not have much of an effect on prescribing.

The difference between the two jurisdictions in Ireland, North and South, is considerable. In the South we prescribe more than three items per prescription. In Northern Ireland, which has the same demographics and the same type of population, they prescribe 1.79 items------

See this speech in context