Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

If one is looking to pick holes in this Bill, one might ask whether there should be inter-generational solidarity. Of course there should. However, that is if one accepts that private health insurance is an appropriate way to fund the health care system and that people can buy their way into our hospitals, or at least skip other people who might well be more ill.

The Labour Party campaigned - it is in the programme for Government - for a universal health insurance levy but it is not clear what role health insurance will play when that levy is introduced. That must be articulated. For example, it is not clear to me what the relationship will be to pay-related social insurance, which had a health component to it but which was amalgamated in recent years. I would welcome a response from the Minister of State on those issues.

People are choosing to have health insurance, where it eats heavily into the budgets of many households that can just about manage to pay it, because they are terrified that if they get sick they will not have the ability to get into hospital for the appropriate care. As has been said previously, when people get into hospital the level of care is good but the problem is accessing those services.

The difficulty in recent years, and certainly in the past 12 months and since this Government has taken office, is that there has been a plethora of closures, including ward closures with a consequent konck-on effect. It is the same position with the publicly funded nursing homes. There is a consequence to taking this approach. Just as our health service developed in a fragmented manner it is being reformed in a fragmented way. It is not at all coherent to the citizens of this country and it is scaring people into taking up private health insurance because they are frightened about what happened to somebody like the late Susie Long, who delayed getting a colonoscopy long enough to end up with a form of cancer that was not treatable.

We have not had a national health strategy in this country and this Government has not articulated one. I stated on several occasions that we must have it mapped out to us what is intended. If we are entering the second Republic that is being talked about we should look to the future in terms of our expectations of the services that are to be provided. There is a responsibility on this Government to do that in a coherent way for people. That would help people in making a decision on whether they need health insurance. They are being frightened into believing they need it. They are afraid that if they or a family member becomes ill, the ability to get into a hospital and be treated is very much reduced without it.

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