Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I add my support to those who have spoken, in particular Deputy Naughten, who presented the figures. I believe the Government is hell-bent on ensuring people no longer have any incentive whatsoever to take out their own private health insurance. Families struggle weekly to put their bit of money together to ensure they can pay for private health insurance. All that has happened is that they have continuously got kicked in the teeth from this Government. The message going out from the Dáil tonight - from the Ministers, the Government and those who support them - is that anybody who has private health insurance would need to reconsider what they are doing. This extra increase is an attack on them at a time when they are already struggling.

All of us in this Chamber know that people who have had private health insurance for a long time want to keep it because they believed in it and thought it was right to provide for their own health care, but they are getting the wrong message from the Government today. In forcing this through, I believe the Government has not thought out its full implications. As my colleagues have stated, all it will do is drive people away from private insurance and put them onto the public waiting lists, which are completely unable to deal with the volume of people who are already on those lists.

I do not know what the Minister or those in the Department were thinking when this was drawn up. Like my colleagues, I too ask what the Minister for Health is doing tonight. It is like when the Seanad issue was being debated out in Donnybrook and the Taoiseach thought it was more sensible to launch a book. I ask what is the Minister for Health doing tonight that is more important than being inside here to answer the questions-----

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