Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I was not going to press it, but I may do so now. We do not know how much this will cost. We do not know what the cap was nor do we know the identity of the company and we have been given spurious reasons for this. As Senator Leyden said very well, there is a myth that the HSE is not involved in any schemes to pay out money, but it is involved in schemes. The Minister of State tells me that the HSE is not able to do something that it is doing. It pays out money for community welfare, it assesses people's means for medical cards and it has been doing this for 40 or 50 years.

At the back of all this is the Tánaiste's ideological agenda to privatise the health service and this is a test case. I do not care about that because I can argue with it on intellectual grounds. However, it is offensive to present this House with an intellectually unsustainable argument. If there is a reason for doing this, I will listen to it as I do not have ideological baggage. Like Senator Quinn, I believe that what is most efficient is what should be done. I am singularly unpersuaded that what is going to be done will be more efficient. I am utterly unpersuaded that it will be more cost effective and because of this, I will press the amendment.