David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We will wait and see what the Higgins report recommends for Waterford Regional Hospital which delivers very good services with its limited budget. It offers excellent oncology services without radiotherapy facilities, as well as excellent neurology and trauma services in the south east. It is a good model for regional and tertiary services.

There is a fundamental difference between what the Minister and I want for the health service. He is trying to force the private health insurance companies to do something which is not how the market system works. He has said a free market system is wrong and that he wants to regulate it. He will not be able to do so because a market system has to be free. How will he ensure patients will only be treated based on their ability to pay, not on need? The Dutch model did not bring about a fairer system but pushed up costs. For all the criticism Sinn Féin receives about what happens in the North, at least in the North there is free health care which is delivered on need alone. Why did the Minister not embrace this model? Why do we have to put more money into private health insurance companies which are out to make profits on the backs of people's health care needs? Why does the State want to see this as the solution and not use taxpayers' money to ensure public health services have the capacity to meet the needs of all citizens? I do not see the logic in the Minister's approach. Is it an ideological obsession that the Fine Gael Party has? It is certainly not the Labour Party's policy.

The amendment aims to bring equity to health care provision. We want to move to universal health care, not insurance, funded though progressive taxation measures and delivered free on the basis of need.