Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Government has wasted health officials’ time for the past three years going on about universal health insurance. It should read what it said:

This Government will introduce Universal Health Insurance with equal access to care for all. Under this system there will be no discrimination between patients on the grounds of income or insurance status. The two-tier system of unequal access to hospital care will end.

I could go on, paragraph after paragraph, not a single bit of it implemented. Things have got much worse. It is debacle after debacle, and the Minister, and the Government have the neck at the end of their term in office, when they had no blueprint coming in, when their reform proposals were pie in the sky with no substance or depth to say that they will do a Martin Callinan on it, they will do a Fennelly on it: when all else fails, to save our political hide we are going to sack people, we are going to sack civil servants; that will look good; that is good public relations. The Taoiseach can ask Deputy Reilly and Deputy Shatter and the former Garda Commissioner. That is what we have been reduced to because of the Government's appalling abject failure in terms of delivery of its own health care policies.

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