Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)

If there was no other option but to go down the route the Minister is taking, namely, the idea of inter-generational solidarity, it would be a good thing and one could not argue against that but the reality is that it is only solidarity among those who can afford this private health care. I do not have any health care package, and obviously I do not have a medical card, and the reason for that is because I do not believe I am better than anyone else. I believe I am equal to everyone else in this country. I have two young children who I love more than any children in this country but at the same time I do not believe they are better than any other children in this country.

Earlier this summer I had an experience of using a service where one could pay to skip the queue when I visited family and friends in London with my family and we went to LEGOLAND. In LEGOLAND, which is not a life and death situation, there is a state of play where the rich children get to skip the queue ahead of the poor children. I was in a lucky position where I could have paid for my children to skip the queue but I decided I would not because I did not believe it was fair. For approximately £80 a day my children could have gone on all of the fairground rides before all of the other children. I left that place very angry that people could be treated like that.

I am in the lucky position that neither of my children, touch wood, are sick and I hope they will not be too sick in the future. We heard interesting figures from Deputy Ó Caoláin earlier that 80.7% of the health service is paid from the public purse yet 53% of the population are treated as second class citizens in that they will have other people jumping the queue ahead of them because apparently they are more important than other people.

I always understood that the Labour Party was a socialist party and the idea of socialism was that everyone is treated equally. It begs the question: what is equal about a situation where a poor child could potentially be left to die while a rich child gets to skip the queue? I cannot see how any socialist could stick by this form of socialism. It does not make sense, so I am left a little bit baffled on where socialism has gone, if it is about killing the poor and letting the rich live longer.

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