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

Okay. I will just say that a key element of the responsibility of a Secretary General is to secure adequate funding for what his or her Department requires. I am saying that there is a mindset in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, which has been there and continues to be there, that does not understand the principle of fully-funded public services, especially a key service like that of health. Nor does that Department understand the political decisions that have been made in recent years in terms of everybody signing up to providing a public health service, as I said, like every other European or developed country has. That needs to be dealt with.

I also wonder about the commitment of some elements of government to the Sláintecare programme. We have a situation now where it is easy to point the finger at the Minister for Health. I understand the Minister's disappointment. It is quite obvious irrespective of the speech he read out. I share that disappointment but, more than anything, the public shares the disappointment in the Government's failure to adequately fund our health service. As a result of the decisions that were taken in the underfunding of the health service for this year and the underfunding that will be inevitable next year, patients all over the country will pay a price. There is an attitude that public services are just for the poor and people who cannot afford to go private. This is quite evident in some elements of this Government and at senior levels in some of our Government Departments. Until that mindset changes, until we understand that we will have a better country, a more inclusive country and a more successful country by having a universal single-tier health service, and until we are prepared to fully fund that and stop the galloping outsourcing and the galloping privatisation going on in our health service, we are not going to be a fully developed modern country. I have to wonder is that actually the agenda at play here. Is it a question of protecting those interests that are making a packet out of private healthcare?

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