Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have come back to the White Paper, which would at least be a starting point for a focused discussion on all of this. When will the White Paper on financing universal health insurance be presented? It had been indicated that it would be published in the early part of the Government's first term. When I asked the Minister how long he thought that term would last, he said the plan was to serve for a full five years. That is my recollection of the Minister's answer. The first part of that term has certainly gone by now, but we seem to be none the wiser. Universal health insurance has always been lauded by the Minister and others as a cornerstone of the Government's health policy. Does he accept that when Fine Gael and the Labour Party adopted the universal health care model, the economy was not far from the high point of the Celtic tiger years, when unprecedented numbers of people were taking out private health insurance? We all recognise that the pendulum has swung the other way. Deputy Kelleher mentioned this to the Minister on an earlier Priority Question. As more and more people move away from private health insurance because they cannot afford it, is a fundamental rethink of the Minister's approach not required? Would it not be better for us to debate health funding rather than proceeding with a model that appears to be based on competing private insurance companies? The Minister's former ministerial colleague, Deputy Shortall, has been hugely critical of the competing private insurance model, as distinct from a State insurance scheme, which we would be interested to hear more about if the Minister is willing to discuss it.

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