Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The majority of people who have health insurance will be faced with increased costs as a result of this measure, and then there will be an inevitable increase in the cost of premiums, meaning that many families will be faced with a bill of between €200 and €300 in additional costs for their health insurance. That makes it less affordable and means that more and more people will abandon their health insurance. That is not the aim of the exercise in terms of moving towards a system of universal health insurance.

I agree with previous speakers who spoke about the need to move towards a different system, whether that be a national health service or a social-insurance-based health system, which I believe would suit this country best. We are travelling down a road that will result in the effective privatisation of much of our health service, with the insurance companies, whose profits and costs are not under control, determining the shape of our health service. As the Minister of State has said, the insurance companies will be the predominant purchasers of health care, whether at acute hospital level or primary care level, and I cannot understand how that will operate within an Irish context.

The model that is being used is the Dutch model. It has not been successful. There has been huge health cost inflation, with very expensive health insurance costs for all of the population as well as underdeveloped primary care. It does not make any sense to be travelling down a road towards a system that has already been shown to have failed in Holland. This will exacerbate the situation in the health system at the moment, and I appeal to the Minister and the Minister of State to do the sensible thing and try their best to ensure that health insurance remains affordable for as many people as possible. This is flying in the face of that.

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