Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely, that is what it is beginning to look like: a horror movie. If it was not so serious, one could make a film out of it and call it "The Return of the Beast, 666", produced by the troika, directed by Deputy Michael Noonan and staring, in the lead role as the beast, the Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly, bringing death and pestilence to a hospital near you. Of course, it is not funny and it is not a play. The reality is a horror for vast numbers of people who are trying to access our public health system.

Now, on top of all that, the Government is going to attack medical card provision for the elderly and the chronically sick. It is going to try to take medical cards away from as many people as it possibly can under the interesting term "medical card probity". The Government is going to increase prescription charges and axe the little tax relief that people who have been forced to take out private health insurance have. This will result in 90% of people who are having to pay through the nose for private health insurance, because they know the public system is a mess, no longer being able to afford that cover and they will be forced back into the public system, which cannot cope as it is. Then, they will have to pay through the nose because they will not have medical cards.

The Government says people will get a general practitioner visit card. What this means is that there will be few savings in terms of the money the Government pays out to GPs per medical card, but the people who are really sick and who must go to hospital will suffer most because they will have to pay €100 to go to the accident and emergency ward, €75 to stay overnight in hospital, €75 for investigative procedures and €144 of the costs of their medication before those costs are covered. The Government will hit precisely the sickest people and the chronically ill. They are the people who will suffer. One could not make it up.

Then, the Government tries to cover this by saying that these people have gold-plated incomes and €600. However, if a person is sick and has to go to hospital regularly for procedures or to accident and emergency wards or whatever, that money will soon evaporate in trying to cover those costs. The sicker a person is, the more it costs and the more a person needs the provision. However, the Government will rob precisely that medical card cover from people when they most need it.

The other dastardly aspect of this is the Government's claim in response to the outrage and outcry about the attack it is waging on medical card cover for the elderly and the sick. The Government says it will give out discretionary cards to anyone who really needs them. When a person is sick, old or maybe even dying, he does not have much time to wade through the bureaucracy of making an application for a medical card. That is precisely the last thing a person should have to deal with in those circumstances, especially since he must now deal with the new centre in Finglas, which cannot cope, even now, which constantly loses applications and which is in an absolute mess. At least in the old days one could go to the HSE office in the local area, talk to a real human being and explain that a person is very sick, has particular circumstances and make an appeal for a medical card. However, now when a person is sick he must contact a post office box, not a human being, and get the run-around. It is absolutely outrageous.

The alternative to this is what we have always proposed: real universal free health care for everyone and a national health service paid for through progressive taxation. Of course, the Government will not provide for this because it is unwilling to impose a little extra tax on the wealthiest in our society, the big corporations or on the accumulated wealth of the richest people. Instead, the Government is unloading the cost on the elderly, the sick, the young and the vulnerable. It is a disgrace and this Bill is a disgrace.

See this speech in context