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

-----believing that media management will take care of everything. Nowhere is this behaviour more manifest than in the Government's abandonment of universal health insurance, which was the cornerstone of its health philosophy for the past ten years and longer. The Taoiseach promised it in 2007 and in 2011. He said it would eliminate the number of people waiting on trolleys, reduce waiting times and provide equal access to all. Instead we have record numbers of people on trolleys, record waiting times and morale at an all time low in our health service.

The Taoiseach has been in denial for the past five years on this issue. In here he has kept on saying the Government would deliver universal health insurance. He even said that a time of economic crisis was the best time to deliver it. He was told repeatedly that it was unworkable by officials in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Finance. He was told this in an independent study commissioned by Fianna Fáil and offered to him by Deputy Billy Kelleher. That study raised the very same concerns KPMG and the ESRI have now raised and which have resulted in the abandonment of this policy. The Irish Medical Organisation said it would go down in history as one of the greatest mis-sellings of health policy ever.

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