The Government’s plans for universal health insurance would represent just another tax, the new president of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) Dr Ray Walley has said.

He said the doctors’ trade union favoured instead a system of universal healthcare.

Dr Walley said universal health care was “ a philosophy which believes that everybody in this country is entitled to adequate, affordable and high quality healthcare when they need it with no bias or favour based on anything other than their health needs”.

He said the country needed to face up to the challenge of reversing the damage inflicted by years of cutbacks across the health services.

He said all categories of doctors, whether they were working in public health, general practice or were consultants or non-consultant hospital doctors knew how fragile a state services were in currently.

“Each of the specialities needs additional resources and the need is urgent.”

The IMO president also said there was an urgent need to tackle the crisis of morale that was “as damaging to the fabric of our health services as the financial cuts have been in recent years”.

‘Undervalued’

He said: “From our studies we know that many medics are exhausted and demoralised. It is simply not acceptable to me that young, highly qualified doctors are leaving this country to work abroad because they cannot contemplate working in an environment where there is career uncertainty… where their work is undervalued… the support services they require to do their jobs are undermined… their remuneration is uncompetitive… and their prospects are underwhelming.”

Dr Walley said a national meeting of GPs which was held at the IMO annual conference on Saturday had shown that many believed the new deal reached with the Government on the provision of free family doctor care for children under 6 was “not perfect”.

However he said it was also clear from the meeting that “there is no doubt whatsoever that it is immeasurably better because of the influence of the IMO negotiating team on the process”.

Dr Walley said that while there would be disagreements at times with the Minister for Health Leo Varadkar, he believed he was a man the IMO could do business with.