Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The argument that we should not provide free GP care to healthy children when there are others in need is sometimes a false one. As SUN, or Scaling Up Nutrition, tell us - one sees it in all the advertisements now, but we have been looking at it for years - proper nutrition and proper care are essential in the first thousand days of a child's life. If a child does not get the essential nutrition within that first thousand days, this has an impact on the rest of its life. The Deputy and I know that there are certain groups of people to whom that essential nutrition is not being delivered, sometimes because it is not clear what it is.

Until the day when we have universal free access to GPs and health care in this country, there will always be hard cases.

I am astonished that we are doing it at a time we have to be extraordinarily careful about how we spend money, but the Fianna Fáil-led Government did not do so at a time when it was awash with money.

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