Brendan Ryan (Labour)

There are two approaches I could take in response to this debate. If I were to attempt to respond to the arguments from the Government side, I would have to conclude immediately as I heard nothing that I did not know already. The Government Senators seem to have become clones of the Minister, Deputy Martin, as they spout statistics in large amounts. Anyone who has followed the health service debate in the last two years is already familiar with the statistics we have heard tonight because Deputy Martin has a button on the back of his head which he presses to make them come out.

We are tired of the statistics as the real issue to be discussed is where the money is going. If so much money has been spent, why have we not seen improvements? In fairness, the Minister for Finance keeps asking this question. The first answer I would suggest is that the service is not improving because we are trying to run a health service on the cheap. Civilised countries spend 10% of GDP on their health services, but we only spend 7.8% of GNP. As our GDP is higher than our GNP, we are spending 40% less than should be the case. Let us remember that Ireland is not the béal bocht country of 50 years ago; it is the third richest country in the world and liable to become the second richest at current projected growth rates. This country has a bad health service because a political decision was taken to keep our health service bad while other priorities took over in the last five years. The first of these decisions was to have an orgy of tax cuts for those who did not need them, like myself.