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

I do not mind; I just wonder how it works. I get pulled up on protocol fast enough.

It is ironic that the Minister used the argument one would expect us to use about subsidies for private health insurance to justify what he is doing. I agree with him, if the other side of that equation were a significant upgrading and increase in resourcing for the public system, so that we are not subsidising a two-tier system, which is wrong. The vast majority of people who take out private health insurance do not want to be in a two-tier system but feel forced to, and now the Minister is punishing them because he will not do what is necessary - that is, fund a proper national health service through progressive taxation.

It is interesting to hear the Minister go through it. The Minister cuts public health budgets. He also cuts subsidies to private health insurance, which will hit the middle group. When we say there is no elasticity in private health insurance, that means the very rich will always be able to afford it. The people in the middle, who are just above the threshold but not rich, take it out because they feel they have to. In many cases they cannot really afford it and this is just enough to push them into a situation in which they feel they cannot afford it. People may feel they have particular ailments and therefore they need health insurance. Simultaneously, the Minister is reducing medical card entitlements, so many of those people who might be entitled to medical cards will not get them.

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