Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is very welcome to the House. I will take this opportunity to wish her all the very best for Christmas. I hope she will get a bit of a break. This Bill is legislation that comes before us annually. There are always little bits and pieces of it that change. I agree with my colleague and friend, Senator Boyhan, in wanting to know a little more about the stamp duty levy reduction. I was not aware of it but if it saves a few pounds for people it has to be good news. It is coming in during quarter 2 next year. It will only be for information purposes but if we got the figures at some stage, we could at least advise people accordingly.

I will raise one other issue that I am not sure the Minister of State was made aware of, but I have been contacted by a couple of people regarding it. It concerns students from abroad who come to Ireland. There was some sort of scheme that covered their medical insurance at a nominal cost, possibly €200 or €300. Apparently, for some reason, and I cannot remember the exact details, those students are not now recognised as part of the risk equalisation scheme. It seems frightfully unfair because in the past, third-level colleges covered their health insurance costs as part of the offer package to attract them to come to this country to study in the first place. We all know that many of our third-level institutions benefit enormously from international students because they pay significantly higher fees than Irish students.

As part of the welcoming initiative certain student allowances were covered, one of which was health insurance. It now seems that we are looking at a situation where that insurance will quadruple in cost. For a young man or woman coming to Ireland to study in Dublin City University or University College Dublin we are talking about €1,000 or €1,200 in health insurance costs. I am sure it is an anomaly and might be something that has not been spotted, but I have been made aware of it by someone who used to work in my office and is now working with a consultancy company. She made me aware of it and I said I would raise it. I am not sure if the Minister of State is aware of it, but she might be able to do something about it because, God knows, we need as many of these third-level students coming to this country as possible.

As a general point, and this is something I fundamentally believe in, we should have a one-tier health service for everybody. Everybody should be able to access health services irrespective of financial background and so on. We are probably a long way from that, but I will always put on the record that it is something we should aspire to. We should aspire to have two things; a world-class health service and access for all to it. If the pandemic has taught us nothing else, it has taught us the importance of our health service, the people who work in it and that when people need to access the health service and a full suite of services they should be able to do so. There should be no difference between a billionaire and somebody who is not a billionaire when it comes to the benefits they get from our health service.

We can never say enough about the phenomenal men and women in our front-line health services. I will give a shout-out to those working in accident and emergency departments, operating theatres, wards, healthcare facilities, nursing homes, the people who provide care in the home, home help and so on. They have been amazing heroes over the past two years. We can never thank them enough and I know the Irish people will always want to thank them. I have no doubt this Bill will fly through the House.