Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I think there are two sides to this point. As discussed earlier, there is the side where we have people in Ireland who have health insurance out of fear. Everything we have been doing for the past four and a half years has been to move away from that and provide a public health service we can be incredibly proud of and that gives people brilliant care when they need it. At a simple level, this is behind everything we are doing. Success for this would be seen in a reduction in people feeling the need to take out private health insurance. One of the reasons it has gone up, and it might have been Deputy Cullinane or another Deputy who referred to the number of people with private health insurance having gone up, which it has, is that the former Minister, James Reilly, brought in the rule whereby if people did not take up health insurance, they would be penalised in later life. Many people ended up taking it up for this reason. Nonetheless, even if we get to where we all want to get to in respect of having a phenomenal public healthcare service that gets people the care they want when they need it, I think people will still take out private health insurance. There are people who will want whatever it is they will want. It could be fancier foyers; I do not know. It should, however, become a nice-to-have rather than something people feel they have no choice other than to take out. I fully accept that.

Another point was raised by Deputy Shortall that is linked to the points being made here, which was that the public health service, to an extent, has been subsidising private care in our public hospitals. This is not the case in the private hospitals, obviously, because these are self-contained entities, but in the public hospitals, that is true. We typically do not charge the fully loaded cost to private patients in public hospitals in terms of health insurance. I hope the Deputies will accept that the public-only consultant contract is a major step in the right direction. It is a fundamental and structural shift that is moving private healthcare provision out of our public hospitals.

The public-only consultant contract is a major step in the right direction. It is a fundamental and structural shift that is moving private care out of our public hospitals. I hope the Deputy will accept my bona fides that I am fully committed to our public hospitals being for public patients.

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