Alex White (Labour)

The hospitals co-location project that was announced with much fanfare by the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Mary Harney, and her colleagues in Government was buried by measures taken in the recent budget. Now that this project, which involved the folly of relying on the property development sector to deal with the development of health care, is in tatters, like many of the Government's policies, will the Leader arrange a debate with the Minister on how we will fund our health care system and how we will end, once and for all, the disgrace of the two-tier health care system in which people's means and incomes determine, if not the quality of health care, at least the speed at which they receive it?

In that context, I warmly welcome the publication yesterday by the Fine Gael Party of a policy programme for universal health insurance. It is an excellent contribution to the debate. The Labour Party has held the view for the best part of a decade and has published extensive policy documents to the effect that universal health insurance is clearly the way we should have proceeded when the matter was being addressed in recent years. It now manifestly is the way forward. I ask the Leader that the Minister for Health and Children attend the House to address the crucial question of health care funding now that the co-location project is at an end.