Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State may not be aware of the full history of this particular issue, but it is a problem for international students coming to Ireland and a requirement by the Department of Justice that they must have health insurance. This has been a long-running sore and to say it has been a difficulty is an understatement.

I raised the matter not long after my election to this House and subsequently raised it with the Ministers, Deputies Harris and Stephen Donnelly, including in this House on 24 September 2020 when the Minister, Deputy Harris, assured me that there would be progress on the issue.

On 5 March 2021, I introduced the Health Insurance (International Students) Amendment Bill with the specific purpose of trying to address this problem for our international students coming here. On the basis that there was a Government commitment that it would be addressed, I chose not to seek to amend the Health Insurance (Amendment) Act that December, because the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, told me that this issue would be resolved in a matter of months. Indeed, I tabled this as a Commencement matter with the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, on 9 December 2021. He assured me that it was not a policy matter for the Department of Health, but that this would be resolved, hopefully, within the following two months.

On Wednesday, 22 June, the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, was back answering this very same Commencement matter. I had tabled it at the time to the Department of Justice, which kicked it over to the Department of Health. I appreciate it is not specifically the remit of the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, but this is why the question is tabled to the Department of Justice.

I have quickly determined that the worst phrase one can hear in these Houses is that a matter falls between a number of Departments. However, what is very clear from the responses that I received from the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and the Department of Health, including from the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, just two weeks ago, is that this is now strictly within the remit of the Department of Justice.

Even though there are negotiations going on within the Departments, the other Departments said this is a matter for the Department of Justice to make a determination on. I am hoping that finally, after more than two years of raising this, and particularly where concerns have been expressed by the universities, the institutes of higher education, the Irish Council for Overseas Students, the Alliance for Insurance Reform, the Union of Students in Ireland – a whole range of players – but more particularly, the concern that this is for international students and international students who want to come here, that we can finally have an effective system that can be put in place that will allow them to have access to affordable insurance.I get that there are broader implications. For the most part, we are talking about students who are healthy and who are only going to be here for a specified period. However, if we are not clarifying this, it is a significant problem in respect of our wish to attract international students into Ireland. I hope that, today, the Minister of State will finally be able to give us some progress on it, particularly as the various Departments have all been promising that a resolution is imminent.