The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has told a special Dáil committee that Ireland’s health system needs a major programme of transformational change if it is to provide a “universal, fully integrated, single-tier public health service that guarantees access and quality care regardless of income.”

At an oral hearing last week, ICTU general secretary Patricia King elaborated on the unions’ written submission to the Oireachtas Committee on the Future of Healthcare. She said that several reform proposals over the past three decades had failed to deliver the fair health service that people crave.

“It is clear that real transformational change has not occurred and we continue to have a dysfunctional system in which the perverse incentives that encourage private over public practice persist,” she said.

Read Patricia King’s statement to the committee here.