Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Independent Group on the motion. It is quite wide ranging. We would like to see all of that implemented as soon as possible. The pandemic showed us many things about our health service, our country and ourselves. There was a collective spirit. It was a very dark time in our history but there was a collective effort to look after each other in our public service. The front-line workers were up against something that was unprecedented in the history of any health service in the last 100 years. Massive sacrifices were made. Collectively we came out of that in a better way in some ways. However, serious inequalities showed themselves in respect of private and public healthcare and the historical legacies of capacity in Ireland. Over the last 30 or 40 years, thousands of beds have been taken out of the public health service. We are living with that capacity issue today. There is a lot of debate around universal healthcare. The majority of people in this country would support universal healthcare. A good example is the NHS in Britain. It is not perfect by any means but it is a much better system than we have here at the moment. Some 50% of people in Ireland still rely on private health insurance. That is not the fault of those people but they think they will have a better chance accessing healthcare privately rather than through the public system. That has to be addressed. They are historical inequalities that lead to really bad outcomes for a lot of people.

Retention and recruitment is the most important issue of our time. It is about keeping staff in this country while there is a crisis in housing. We need to keep staff here rather than having to go abroad.

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