It is regrettable that on his first visit to the House to ask the House to agree to a statutory function of the Minister for Health the new Minister should engage in this exercise which can only be described as bordering on deceit and misrepresentation. To suggest that in any way the limit for eligibility for these health services in being increased from £5,500 to £7,000 is to disregard completely the facts, the terms of the national understanding and the de facto situation as it obtains. It is extraordinary that the Minister should have the gall to come in here and suggest to the House that the income limit for the health services' eligibility be increased from £5,500 to £7,000 without any reference whatsoever to the terms of the national understanding or to the chaos which his predecessor and his predecessor in turn created since 25 July last in the health service. While at this time last year, on 27 March, the Minister's predecessor, who is now Taoiseach, was in the House asking the House to agree to a limit of £5,500 for health eligibility, the other arm of the Government at the time were negotiating the national understanding. As part of that negotiation of the national understanding the Minister for Economic Planning and Development and the Taoiseach of the day negotiated a different ceiling for eligibility for health services. In National Understanding for Economic and Social Development on page 8 it is stated:
The Government have authorised the Minister for Health to make arrangements for an upward revision of the health eligibility limit from £5,500 to £7,000.
Obviously the Government had not got around to informing the then Minister for Health that they were negotiating such an upward increase in the eligibility limit because the Minister on 27 March last year was assuring us here in the House that he believed that the limit of £5,500 was a fair one which was acceptable to the ICTU. He said, and I quote from the Official Report, column 458, volume 313:
This new limit of £5,500 relates to income for the year ending 5 April 1979. It will apply throughout the following year, that is during the year up to 5 April 1980. Before that date it will be reviewed having regard to changes in incomes and it will be increased again if circumstances warrant this.
We were all surprised—probably no one more so than the Minister for health—to find that within a fortnight it had been reviewed and in the terms of the national understanding increased to £7,000. The Minister for Health at the time then discovered the administrative difficulties involved and announced that he was introducing an interim scheme whereby all those whose earnings were between £5,500 and £7,000 could claim from the VHI the moneys expended on the health service for which they would not otherwise have been covered irrespective of whether they were subscribers to that board. That situation has obtained since 25 July last.
Nonetheless, the present Minister walks into the House here today—and into the Seanad yesterday—and invites the House, without comment or explanation, to approve the increasing of the income limit from £5,500 to £7,000 without any reference to the national understanding or the fact that people who apparently, through whatever de facto situation, have cover now up to £7,000 are going to discover themselves to be excluded during the course of the coming year because the national understanding will have brought a certain number of them, roughly those who were earning something like £6,500, above the limit of £7,000 as they will find when they get their P.60 form for the financial year up to April. No regard whatsoever is being taken of the situation in relation to those people, and the Minister has not the courtesy to inform the House that this de facto situation obtains.
A more important situation which has not been dealt with is the question of the statutory authority for the expenditure of the money on the people whose incomes were between £5,500 and £7,000. That expenditure has gone on since 25 July last through the aegis of the VHI Board without any statutory authority in the Dáil and no request is being made for retrospective authority for the expenditure of those public moneys. If authority was to be sought one would have expected that it would have been sought today in relation to both the regularising now of the income limit and the making of new regulations for the coming year. However, there has been no reference to that in the House. Beyond a reply to a parliamentary question of 23 October last the House has never been informed as to where authority for the payment of these moneys for people whose incomes were between £5,500 and £7,000 came from between July last and now. The Minister for Health apparently is still making no effort to inform the House, nor indeed is he making any effort to inform the health boards, who have been thrown into utter chaos and confusion because they do not have any legislative or statutory authority for expenditure of moneys on their part—for instance on the Infant Welfare Scheme.
