David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Bill. Sinn Féin will support the abolition of any charges. We have long argued for the abolition of such charges we believe fundamentally in a public health service and that public health services should be free at the point of delivery and delivered on the basis of need. We are travelling in the right direction and the new public-only contract for consultants in hospitals is another step forward to building truly public hospitals where we can once and for all separate private healthcare from public healthcare. This is something we all supported when we passed Sláintecare.

I have to point out to the Minister in the short time I have that while I welcome the abolition of these charges, the big challenge we have in hospitals and in healthcare at the moment is access to care, overcrowding and people waiting too long. While people will obviously welcome and will want to see these charges abolished, the critical issue at the moment for people right now are people being on trolleys, people waiting far too long waiting lists and a staff who are facing morale injury every day from working in a healthcare system that is at breaking point. Those staff deserve tremendous credit for the work they do and I am the first to acknowledge much of the good work which is happening in healthcare right across all of the strands of it from primary care, community care to acute care but it has many challenges. Part of that challenge is the lack of capacity, the high demand for care, particularly in emergency departments, which is not a winter problem any more, but is all year around. We have a lot more to do.

I am aware that other Members want to speak and I do not want to delay the passage of this Bill. We all support it. It is a very short Bill and possibly one of the shortest the Minister will bring forward as it simply abolishes an existing Bill, but more importantly, it abolishes those inpatient charges in full which I support.

See this speech in context