Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes. It promised a new health system. It promised to eliminate long waiting lists, the two-tier health system, trolley waits and to introduce a universal health insurance scheme - fair care. Sinn Féin warned that this would not work, as did other parties and independent health experts, but the Taoiseach would not listen. This morning, the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, in a car crash interview said that instead of a concrete plan for health, the Government has a vision. The people languishing on trolleys this morning do not need a vision; they need a solution. The Minister, Deputy Varadkar, like the Taoiseach, offers no solution. He asserted that the universal health insurance scheme remains the Government's preferred model, as the Taoiseach has repeated. This is clearly due to Fine Gael's ideological position which favours the interests of private health insurance companies over the interests of patients and their families. This is a for-profit position. The Minister, Deputy Varadkar, insists that he is merely shelving this proposition. He then went on to say that it would not happen in the next Dáil if, God forbid, the Government is re-elected. He says it might be done in the following Government's term.

Universal health care based on health needs, not on wealth, paid for by direct taxation and free at the point of delivery is the only fair and viable model to deliver the rights of citizens through a truly public health service. Will the Taoiseach take the opportunity this morning to rule out, once and for all, his unfair, for-profit model which patently has been taken off the agenda by the Minister for Health?

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