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

I will not use my entire ten minutes. I will probably take less than five. I welcome the motion tabled by Sinn Féin. We have had many debates on this issue. We probably cannot have enough debates about our health system. As it is, our health system is good, when people can get access to it. We have some of the best doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants and clerical staff in Europe. They are a very highly motivated and educated workforce, but there are mitigating circumstances whereby there is a schism between public and private. Over the course of the pandemic, we saw that no country could prepare for what was coming down the line, but front-line staff in each hospital stepped up to the plate in the most trying circumstances that could ever be imagined. I am sure people who were qualified doctors and nurses with years of experience could never have imagined that they would be up against something like Covid, but we pulled through. Many people died but the system saw itself through. However, many cracks were seen. The cracks in our health service are largely down to the divide of the inequalities. These are the historical inequalities between public and private.

The current situation in Ireland is unique in Europe in that 50% of our citizens rely on private health insurance. It is very weird that 50% of people have to rely on private health insurance because we have a divided system. I am sure people who have private health insurance want universal healthcare. Such healthcare, as seen across different parts of Europe and the world, is much better because whether somebody is on social welfare or is a millionaire, they get the same healthcare. That is a much better system for society and, most important, for the people who need that care.

One of the most crucial issues in our health service at present is the retention of staff. As I said, staff are very highly educated and very motivated but retaining that staff is a significant challenge, in the context of their working environment. Certain situations in our emergency departments are just not conducive to a safe working environment. There are situations where people have to go to work but are slightly frightened, to say the least. They are frightened as there is not a high enough ratio of staff to patients for people who are in that environment to actually look after certain medical situations. That is a fact. I have friends who work in the health service, as we all do. They are highly motivated and educated people who want to go to work but they are in situations that are completely unsafe. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has consistently said this. That has to be addressed. We do not want people who are newly qualified - some people want new experiences and to go to Australia and so forth, which is understandable - on a conveyor-belt system where they get fed up, burnt out and have to leave two or three years after qualifying. We just do not want that because we will have this conveyor-belt system as regards new staff. That is not a good situation to have.

As I said, universal healthcare, including Sláintecare, is a very good concept. For probably the first time in the history of this House, even those from the party of the Minister of State who have supported private healthcare now understand that a system of universal healthcare, or Sláintecare, would be much better. We largely agree on that. Sláintecare is a good concept but it is going very slowly. Its implementation is extremely slow. That needs to be fast-forwarded.

The creeping privatisation in our system is very worrying. I go back to the historical legacy of the 1980s and 1990s when hundreds if not thousands of beds were taken out of our public health system. We are playing catch-up. We are a very wealthy country. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We should have a health system where people, regardless of their income, are treated properly. We all agree with that but it is not happening. There are pinch points, particularly around emergency departments and waiting lists. There are people who have been on waiting lists for years. That is just not acceptable at all. Once we fix all those pinch points, then we can have truly universal healthcare in Ireland.

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