Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. I did not get the opportunity to make many of the points I would like to have made in the debate on the budget as the debate was concluded before I got that opportunity. Therefore, today I intend to speak not just on the Bill but on the broader fiscal decisions the Government has made in the budget that feeds into the Bill.

The Department of Finance comes in for significant criticism regarding why we are where we are and the difficulties that have fed into the economy over many years. There is a political responsibility for that, but there is also an administrative responsibility and culpability. However, it beggars belief that we now have a situation where the Minister and Department of Finance are now systematically undermining the Minister for Health. The poor Minister for Health was at an Oireachtas committee meeting a couple of weeks ago, after the budget, at which I asked him a simple question about private health insurance. I asked him whether he was aware a cap had been put on the relief available for it. He said the first he heard of it was when the Minister apprised him of the tax implications of the budget.

I have no wish to pick a fight with any Minister here, but one of the central tenets of the Government's health policy is universal health insurance. This means we need to have a vigorous, vibrant health insurance market if we want to attract as many people as possible to take out private health insurance. This is the basic principle of universal health insurance. We can argue over implementation of universal health insurance or whether it is the right way to go, but the central tenet remains the same. We are waiting for the White Paper on universal health insurance, but the Minister for Finance has decided to drive a coach and four through Government policy. This beggars belief.

It beggars belief on a number of fronts. It beggars belief the Department of Finance does not have a notion about the Government's policy on health. If it did, it would have asked the Department of Health for its views and opinions on private health insurance. Most people have health insurance policies that are far from being gold-plated. They had assumed that if they were paying €1,000 for their health insurance policy, that was what it cost; they did not realise another 20% had to be added because of the tax credit system. The average person with an average health insurance policy will see the cost increase next year because of the Minister's policy of charging the full cost for private patients in public beds and many other medical inflationary pressures. The real reason it will increase is the Department of Health was not consulted and the Department of Finance and the Minister decided to abandon the Government's policies on health and drive a coach and four through them. This is inexplicable, but we all sit around and pretend it has not happened.

The Minister for Health has no credibility when it comes to arguing his case at the Cabinet. If he did, one would assume the Minister for Finance would have told him that he had been scratching around trying to find ways of implementing the Government's broader policies and that he was thinking of reducing the tax relief on private health insurance to raise several hundred million euro. The Minister for Finance would have explained this would have a direct impact on the cost of health insurance which would mean that more people would leave the market, the debt spiral would continue and private health insurance would become more expensive and he would have asked the Minister for Health what he thought of this. I am quite definite the poor Minister for Health would have told him not to undermine the central principle of Government policy in delivering health care for the next generation. He would have told him he was going to publish a White Paper on universal health insurance in several weeks or months and not to introduce this measure. The Minister for Health was not even asked and no consultation took place. We have since found out he was handed a €666 million cut by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform.

We have a major problem. As this particular provision is included in the Finance (No. 2) Bill, I cannot for the life of me understand how we can pretend in the Chamber there is a coherent plan on one of the most fundamental issues facing the Government on a continual basis - how to fund health care. The mandarins in the Department of Finance either did not tell the Minister for Health or the Minister for Finance, or the Minister for Finance did not know or does not care that a central policy of the Government is to support private health insurance to ensure we will have a vibrant market when a system of universal health insurance is rolled out. I have major concerns about this aspect.

It is a grave insult for the Minister to state it only affects gold-plated policies. I am sorry, but it does not affect gold-plated policies only. It affects people who have decided to pay their private health insurance premiums and who are at their pin of the collar every month in trying to make this payment if they are paying by direct debit. Next January or February they may face a choice between filling the tank with oil or gas or renewing their private health insurance policy. They are not gold-plated policies; far from it. This will add a huge burden on families who are in debt and under pressure. The Minister for Finance waxed and stated it was only gold-plated policies which would be affected. That is disingenuous to say the very least.

This issue must be revisited for a number of reasons. It is an attack on those trying to provide for themselves and lighten the burden on the State by not having it provide health care for them. At least, the rate of relief should be raised to go after the gold-plated health insurance policies. Perhaps this might be considered. It is simply not the case that every health insurance policy is gold-plated. I, therefore, ask that this measure be revisited. We are awaiting a White Paper on universal health insurance and I am quite definite, regardless of whether one has a social democratic perspective or an alternative view on how the health service should be funded, that the one central principle required for a system of universal health insurance is that there be a vibrant health insurance market. There is no other way. It will be either State supported or supported by the private insurance sector, but there must be an insurance market.

I welcome the retention of the 9% VAT rate for the tourism sector which has an immediate impact on job creation in communities throughout the country. It is important that the industry have certainty that this will be the case for a definite period. With regard to the travel tax, I welcome any measure that will help business and the flow of people into the country, in particular.

The central issue concerrns the thrust of the Government and the direction in which it is going. To make a very political point, I do not believe there is any point in the Labour Party being in government any more. I say this for one reason - the budget would not have cost one cent for a person earning €250,000 five weeks ago, but it would have cost a pensioner in rural Ireland who required a telephone €9.50 a month at the very least, not to mention the removal of other fringe benefits. We must revisit this issue. Are we asking the people in receipt of basic social welfare pensions to meet the budgetary deficit? That is what the Government is doing. I cannot accept for any reason that there is an economic argument to be made that those who can pay the most cannot be asked to do so but those on the margins of society will be burdened. This will be reinforced by the Bill, coupled with the social welfare legislation debated in the House recently. The thrust of Government policy in reining in the public finances is inherently unfair.

Politics is about choices. Fine Gael has boasted about winning the debate in government because income tax has not been increased. The poor Labour Party Ministers must come up with another argument that social welfare rates have not been cut. Tell a person on €227 a week who is losing the €9.50 telephone allowance that it is not a cut. I beg to differ. If people earning more than €150,000 were asked whether they could make a larger contribution through the universal social charge or income tax, they might not like it, but they could do so, while the telephone allowance could be left alone.

This is not a political point pulled out of the sky by anyone on this side of the House. It is recognised by every independent research body in the country. The three most recent budgets have been regressive, as the ESRI and many other organisations have stated on a number of occasions. We have had a change of dynamic and direction in policy. From 2008 to 2010, during the most difficult times when budgets were announced frequently and public expenditure was reined in at pace by a figure of up to €6 billion per annum, we still asked those who could pay most to do so.

I believe we genuinely have to address that issue. We can find the money somewhere else and we have stated quite clearly where we could find it. Not only that, we have stated what the Government should have done. I simply cannot accept that it is now asking those on basic social welfare payments to pay, yet the Labour Party tells us again that there has been no cut to social welfare payments. I am sorry, but if a person was in receipt €188 a week at one stage and is now on €100 because of changes to the age limits for basic social welfare payments, in my book that is a cut of €88 a week, no matter what way one looks at it. Despite this, we are told it is just an extension of the age limit from 21 to 25 years, not a cut. It is certainly a cut for anybody who was in receipt of €188 a week. The difficulty is that those who are drafting, promoting and implementing policies do not seem to understand that when one is living on the margins, €1, €2, €9.50 or €88 a week, for a young man of 24 years of age, is a major cut and will have a devastating impact on one's ability to partake at the very margins of society, never mind to move into the mainstream again.

The Finance Bill, for all of the frills and graces around pretend Mickey Mouse job schemes, is deeply unfair and flawed. The Government is asking those who have the least to pay the most and carry the burden in meeting the deficit the country faces.

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