Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

This is the annual event at which we look at the 2013 permanent risk equalisation scheme and make the normal annual adjustments to elements of it. There are three provisions in this legislation that propose changes to the rates to come into effect in April 2018, to make related amendments to stamp duty legislation, to adjust the lifetime community rating system and to extend the Minister's powers. What the Minister is proposing to do is to tweak a very dysfunctional private insurance system relating to a very dysfunctional health system. In many ways, we are having the wrong debate. We are talking about a situation in which nearly half the population feel they have no choice but to take out very expensive private health insurance. That kind of two-tier system does not happen anywhere else. Many people who cannot afford private health insurance feel they have no choice but to pay for it because our public system is so weak. The standard plan B cover that many people take out costs something in the region of €1,500 per person. That is way beyond the reach of many people, especially the elderly, but they make sacrifices in a whole lot of other aspects of their lives in order to maintain private health insurance. They do so out of fear that if they are faced with serious medical conditions, they cannot depend on the public health system. This is an extraordinary indictment of our public health system. We are alone in Europe in this kind of thing. Every other European country has a reliable, dependable public health system whereby people feel that when they need care, they will be able to access it in a timely manner. In Ireland, 46% of people feel, mainly out of fear, that they have to fork out for huge premiums that are increasing year on year. In return for those expensive premiums, they get a very poor deal.

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