Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and wish him the best of luck in the next week and in his subsequent career. I do not welcome the Bill. It harkens back to the era of bribing people with their own money. It was reported in the Irish Examinerlast Thursday that the Department of Health has a reported overrun of €158 million. Why on earth are Ministers in that Department extending eligibility when they cannot fund what they have? That has been a persistent criticism of the IMF. I note that the Minister of State does not state how much it will cost or the number of people involved. This could very well repeat the mistake made the last time we had one of these measures, which was the extension of medical cards to everybody over 70 which was a massive cost overrun.
I believe in targeting and that those who have should put money into the fund so the have-nots will benefit. We cannot entertain the delusion that one can subsidise everybody although we did so by borrowing vast amounts of money abroad. Redistribution in society means that some people pay in - I think they should be those in the top half of the community - and some people benefit. First of all, those who benefit should be those right down at the worst level of poverty. We should gradually work on them. Extending benefits to the entire population in a country that is bankrupt is bizarre. It is bribing people with their own money. To the economist in me, this brings us right back to what got this country into trouble - people making irresponsible political promises. I apply this to the tax cuts I have heard mentioned in some discussions.
Everybody accepts that there should be a redistribution from the haves to the have-nots. This is what the medical card system set out to do. As the Minister of State said, it is currently benefiting the 40% of people who are worst off. In respect of extending it to 100%, I wish to draw attention to the EU Survey on Income and Living
Conditions, EU-SILC, study of poverty among children which used an index involving 12 items such as a separate bed, their own books, food and drinks for friends when they call over, their own money, a family holiday in Ireland or abroad, a day out with the family, a bank or post office account, shops close to home. The study found that 69.5% of children reported not having to go without any of those items. Why did we not use the DEIS model which deals with deprivation in schools? It caters for 167,000 out of 888,000 children in primary and secondary schools. Barnardos estimated recently that 9.9% of children are in consistent poverty. The DEIS number is 19%. The EU-SILC survey has a figure of about 30%. Nobody has 100%. We are fooling ourselves in this House if we think we can subsidise 100% of the population on the basis that somehow 100% of children in this country are in poverty.
I also note that there are other solutions to this. I see that VHI offers a 15% discount for children and students that expires in October. The fourth child and subsequent children are free on those plans. We must be serious about income distribution in this country. It does mean taking from some people to give to other people. One cannot give something to everybody except through the kind of foreign borrowing we have engaged in. Bribing the electorate with their own money or borrowed money should be left in the past. There is no evidence to support subsidising 100% of children in any of the research on child poverty that I have researched in preparation for today.
The GP service is the part that actually works. It does not keep people on trolleys and does not seem to have waiting lists. I believe the Government wishes to abolish the HSE. It should have tackled the problems in hospitals but it is now interfering with the bit that does work. A total of 60% or 70% of the population pays €55 to visit a GP. We would all love to shunt the bill on to somebody but that is make-believe land. There is no magic wand that will pay that bill. Why are we distorting the part of the health system that actually works and not reforming situations involving people on waiting lists and people on trolleys?
This was a misguided political promise. I do not think it has any benefits at all. We were doing it at the time. We were taking away medical cards from people who were in genuine need. Given the precedent of the mistake that was made with the over-70s, we should not have continued with this. I ask the Minister of State to redistribute resources towards the really needy in society and not people who do not satisfy any of the research criteria as to what constitutes poverty. Pretending we are all poor and that, therefore, we will have a huge redistribution policy towards everybody is an illusion. It is part of the reforms that we should have introduced in this House when we all came up here three years ago and part of the response to when a country goes bankrupt. To persist with the free money from Brussels and free gifts for everybody when we know the current state of Exchequer - we are borrowing €8 billion per year - is wrong. Choosing the richest 40% and 50% of the population as the group to benefit from a measure like this is doubly wrong.