Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The state of the public health service is a scandal and a disgrace. In so far as this new committee can contribute anything, its contribution will be to moving away from a failed policy that has been pursued for the past decade at least and pursued consistently by the last Government in pursuit of the mirage of universal health insurance, a policy it has finally abandoned. If only it had listened to the criticisms we presented to that model right from the beginning, but finally, five years on, the previous Minister, Deputy Leo Varadkar, had to admit we were right and that it would cost more. We had said in 2011 that it would cost more, but the Government just did not listen. I hope, despite it having gone down that cul-de-sac, the new committee offers us some vehicle to look seriously at the problem and abandon failed policies.

The list of ills and crises and the catalogue of suffering and failure to provide services for those who need them are simply too long to list. I will just mention in passing some of the key areas that urgently need to be addressed. They include, for example, the disaster in emergency departments, the latest manifestation of which is the figure of 50,000 people who walk in and then walk out of emergency departments. Could there be a more severe indictment? One can add to that number the people who did not even go in because they were afraid to do so, given that they knew how bad the situation was.

There are chronic waiting lists of people in chronic pain or in chronic need of hip replacements and of children waiting to see ear, nose and throat specialists. There is a shameful situation in mental health services, where we do not have the 24/7 emergency services we need for persons who are suicidal. In particular, there is the absence of sufficient resources to provide for individuals who go into emergency departments and say they are suicidal, only to be told, "Sorry, we are not treating you because you have alcohol and drink problems," which is in itself disgraceful when we need dual diagnosis and the resources to deliver such a service. In contravention of European directives, children and young people are being placed in adult mental health wards. There are outrageously long waiting lists to see occupational and speech and language therapists. We hear about the deaths of mothers and babies in hospitals because of the lack of consultants and other staff. I could go through the list, but I do not have the time to do so.

Can we address all of these issues? The only way we can address them, as we have been saying for five years, is by taking profit out of the equation. When we talk about the need for a national health service from the cradle to the grave and funded through progressive central taxation, the other side often says it is a fantasy and asks from where we would get the money. Of course, we have had the answer to this question provided recently by the OECD, when it revealed the fact that we actually spent more on health services in this country than almost anywhere else in the world; we spend way above the average. Where is that money going? Some €13 billion comes directly from the Exchequer into the public health service which is in pieces, but another €5 billion is also being spent on health services. Where is that money going? The CSO helpfully tells us. Some €2.68 billion is going in household, out-of-pocket payments, mostly in private health insurance which is going into the pockets of the private health industry. Another €2.7 billion is spent on pharmaceuticals and drugs. Therefore, an extra €5 billion is being spent on unnecessary administration or going into the profits of for-profit health services, whether in the production of drugs or the private health care system.

In a way, one can see this happening. The two-tier system and the waste of money on private, for-profit health services are very obvious when, as I have said on a number of occasions in the House, patients go to St. Vincent's University Hospital or St. James's Hospital. They find a war zone and are told they will be waiting 12, 24 or 36 hours, but they then hear on the radio an advertisement for the Blackrock Clinic: "Come here; you will not have to wait, as long as you can pay". How many such private clinics are there? They are all over the place. We have the capacity, but, shamefully, only a tiny proportion of the population can access it, while we, the public, are subsidising it and lining their pockets. What we need to do is take that profit element out of the equation and redirect the money into the public health service in order that we would have a national health system available all on the basis of medical need. It is not difficult.

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