A Labour Party survey on healthcare has confirmed that there is a two-tier service in place, that people are discouraged from attending a doctor because of the cost, and that the A&E system is "a mess", party leader Pat Rabbitte told a press conference in Dublin yesterday.
Introducing the findings, Labour deputy leader and health spokeswoman Liz McManus said: "Here we have the evidence that the Government has failed to deal with the key issues affecting people. Your health outcome depends on whether you can afford insurance or not."
The survey found that 84 per cent of private patients saw a consultant within three months, whereas the figure for public patients was 30 per cent. Only 14 per cent of private patients had to wait from three to six months, compared with 28 per cent in the public sphere.
A mere 1 per cent of private patients had to wait between six and 12 months, as against 20 per cent of public patients. Again, only 1 per cent of private patients was obliged to wait more than a year, compared with 22 per cent of public patients.
A total of 40 per cent of respondents said they were deterred from visiting their general practitioner by the cost. "We knew that cost was a deterrent for people on modest incomes, but here we have very clear evidence," Ms McManus said.
She said the "most shocking statistic" to emerge from the survey was that one person in seven, or 13 per cent, said cost deterred them from taking their sick child to the GP.
Although A&E facilities had been given "flagship status" by Minister for Health Mary Harney, the survey showed that 60 per cent, or almost two out of three people, waited six hours or more to be seen at A&E.
Some 51 per cent of all patients waited more than 12 hours for a bed, having been seen at A&E, and nearly half of that total waited more than 24 hours. The figures for Dublin were higher than anywhere else.
The survey was conducted by members of the Labour Party in January and February this year. A questionnaire was sent in prepaid envelopes to 50,000 people, chosen at random from the electoral register in 20 constituencies, mainly in Leinster and Munster.
A total of 1,627 responses were received, which a party spokesman said was higher than the average rate for similar surveys. Among the respondents, 927 were female, 456 were male and 244 did not state their gender.
Ms McManus said she did not accept that sufficient beds could not be provided in hospitals: "The problem has been that the political will simply was absent."
Mr Rabbitte said: "The greatest inequality at the heart of the Irish health services is the two-tier system, and that really is the essence of the objection that we have to the Harney solution, which is endorsed by the Cabinet but not by most Fianna Fáil TDs, if you talk to them privately."
He added: "The attempt [ is] to provide super-private clinics on the campuses of public hospitals and I think it will exacerbate or worsen the two-tier divide in Irish health."
Dublin North Labour candidate Brendan Ryan said he had been monitoring the situation at Beaumont Hospital, which is in his constituency. "If things are getting better, it's not apparent at Beaumont," he said.
