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

If the Minister is Santa Claus, nothing will surprise me any more. Here we are waiting on Santa Claus's White Paper. Perhaps we will have a white Christmas, too.

A market based private health insurance system is not the route to real and necessary reform of the health service. I will repeat that message ad nauseam in the hope the Minister and his colleagues will listen to my argument. Meanwhile, the deeply flawed two-tier system deteriorates as a direct result of the futile austerity policy and scandalous health cuts of the Government. Earlier today Deputies discussed Committee Stage of another Bill that will change eligibility for health services. The cuts it imposes will hurt people who have given mighty service to the State for many years, targeting as they do at least 35,000 citizens aged over 70 years. None of these measures is doing anything to address the need of citizens to have access to a quality, universal health system.

As with its predecessor, this Bill is a necessary measure for the insurance sector, as it stands. Overall, however, the future of health insurance and the health system generally under the Government is fraught with the deepest uncertainty because the Minister is unable to make up his mind and grasp the real prize. What a powerful legacy he would leave if he were to introduce a universal system of health care, one paid for from general taxation and available to all citizens on the basis of need. That would bring to an end, once and for all, the days of competing profiteers. Such a system would be at the top of my list for Santa Claus.

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