Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The fundamental question is whether the health services are adequately funded. No matter what the system, if the funding and staffing levels are inadequate, then it will not be a good health service. The second thing is to ensure that money is spent well. This comes from activity-based funding. We are very much pushing ahead with activity-based funding to ensure that money follows the patient and that hospitals are paid for what they do. Research has been done by the ESRI and I look forward to publishing it as soon as possible. The research indicates different sets of costings. We could apply universal health insurance only to hospitals, to hospitals plus primary care or to hospitals plus primary care plus drugs and social care.

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