Jimmy Harte (Labour) | Oireachtas source

A debate is needed on the whole health insurance system. Some of us were in Taiwan last January as part of a delegation. Taiwan has a similar system to ours, with both public and private services, but there were no waiting lists in Taiwan. We asked them why this was so, and they said it was because the system there worked more efficiently. I believe the system can work efficiently if it is taken control of. Over the years, the VHI was obviously a company that was, as the Senator said, subsidised by the taxpayer. There is now a competitive market and I believe market forces will come into play.

As a speaker on the other side of the House said, there are those who can afford expensive health insurance and others who cannot. We are moving to a system under which those who can afford private health care will pay for it, as they do in the United States. We are happy to have a debate on this issue but Members should not forget what happened to the health service under the last Government. The leader of the Fianna Fáil party was the Minister for Health and Children, although I do not want to rehash that. There is a storeroom out there somewhere filled with reports signed at the bottom by Deputy Micheál Martin.