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

Under section 12, we are having higher and further charges imposed, and for what? At the end of the day there is no doubt that it is for shrinking services. That is what we are looking at here. The Bill increases the daily charges for public inpatient services to acute hospitals from €75 to €80. If we consider the cohort of people who will be impacted by that increase, as I said in relation to section 11, the Minister might not think that extra is excessive but I can assure him that in many of the cases I know and represent in this House, that additional €5 is a substantial further burden and it does have consequences. Already, countless numbers of people, as many Deputies in this House can attest, are making the decision not to go to their general practitioner or not to go to hospital when they need to because of the cost. That is a fact of life. Parents with children are particularly vulnerable in this regard and many of them make the decision, and perhaps a number of times even in a single year, to put the health and other needs of their children before their own health considerations. That means, ultimately, they are neglecting their health and providing for their children, which is an understandable choice, but the consequences for themselves, while perhaps not immediately presenting in any severe way, will build up and there will come a day of reckoning. They pay a very serious price for their care pattern.

The Minister will say services have to be paid for and of course they do. We have made the case for this repeatedly. We have repeatedly proposed ways of raising and saving revenue. This has been made clear time and again by political voices in engagement with the troika. I have been a party to that engagement on a number of occasions, in addressing excessive salaries at the top of the HSE and in terms of the Department and the Minister's adviser staff, and in addressing the hugely excessive costs of medicines, which was highlighted again on the national airwaves today where the differential between the cost of medicines for the public on this side of Border is multiples of what people pay north of the Border and in a variety of European and other settings. As was highlighted today on the national broadcaster, people pay in excess of €100 for the same medicines here that they can buy with the words "made in Ireland" on the cover of the box overseas in Turkey for €3. What is being made in Ireland? The Irish public are being made a scapegoat for something and this is not being grabbled with in any serious way despite all the Minister's negotiations and the alleged €400 million savings in the cost of drugs.

I have highlighted again and again that a new top rate of tax and a wealth tax should be introduced. These are the alternatives the Government will not choose and that it has repeatedly rejected. It is indicative of a closed mindset in this regard. It is a very sad and sorry situation. We are asked to pass this and other legislation on the promise that all will be well under the Government's universal health insurance system, but we have yet to see the Government's White Paper in this regard. We have none of the detail only the continued mantra that all will be well once the universal health insurance system is presented. This is supposed to be a cornerstone of Government's health policy and not only of Fine Gael but of Fine Gael and Labour. There is no cornerstone and therefore we know what the health policy really is - it is a shambles. The idea that it is going to be resurrected out of these unseen proposals is nothing other than a trundled out mantra. It will never be reformed under this Government and under this Minister.

See this speech in context