Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

A cursory glance at the programme for Government and an analysis of it with the benefit of five years of hindsight shows it is a catalogue of failure. The two central tenets of health care delivery in Ireland were to be universal health insurance and free GP care for everybody. There has been an abandonment of the universal health insurance model as was outlined. It appears to have been parked, even though there is a pretence it is not off the agenda. However, the bottom line is the Government has failed to implement any part of universal health insurance. If one moves on to universal GP access, the Minister announced last night he also was delaying or potentially abandoning it because of the lack of capacity in the GP services. In this Dáil Chamber, Fianna Fáil Members repeatedly and consistently raised the need to enhance the capacity of GP services before any roll-out of universality and were consistently ridiculed as being opposed to it. However, they were not opposing but were merely highlighting the inadequacies of preparation in bringing about of universal access to GP services. Such services are not akin to buses in Calcutta, in that one cannot just keep putting things in and expect it to keep filling, as at some stage, something will give. The reason so many people are on hospital trolleys across Ireland, day in day out, is because GP services cannot cope.

See this speech in context