Howlin said health spending was at pre-crisis levels. Not in my view, says Leo
SPENDING on our health service remains €1billion less compared to the pre- crisis levels – as a winter of discontent in crowded A&Es looms.
Health Minister Leo Varadkar announced his department will have funding of a l most €13.2billion, an increase of almost €900million – or 7.1 per cent – compared to last year’s Budget.
Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin in his Budget speech yesterday had boasted that he was ‘happy to say the figure restores the resourcing of our health services to its pre-crisis level’.
However the Health Minister admitted we are ‘still about one billion short from the peak’ when asked if spending in health was back to pre- crisis levels as Mr Howlin insisted yesterday.
Asked was spending at pre- crisis levels he claimed: ‘Not in my view, but like I say there are there are a number of variables and I need to get a short paper done on that just so everyone knows exactly what the future is. The estimate last year was €12.2billion and this year it’s €13.1billion.’
Mr Varadkar said he was confident the € 600million supplementary budget or overrun would not be exceeded by the HSE this year.
However the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said the‘ marginal’ increase was insufficient to resolve the current inadequate capacity of the health service to meet demand.
In a statement it said the budget allocation of €13.175billion was still significantly less than the Budget allocation for 2007 of almost €15billion, prior to the economic crash. It said the Budget increase represented only a small step towards making our health service fit for purpose, capable of meeting demand while recognising the increased costs arising from demographics, best clinical practice and drugs. The union claimed the funding will not allow the health system address the current A&E overcrowding which has significantly deteriorated over the past 18 months.
INMO general secretary Liam Doran said last night: ‘The INMO had hoped that t he Government would bring forward a three-year funding plan for the health service, which would have seen a minimum of 10 per cent of GDP allocated on a sustained basis to this critically important public service.’
Mr Doran added: ‘ Today’s allocation is also silent on how we will recruit frontline professionals, particularly nurses and midwives, for our health service. It is very disappointing that the Budget allocation does not seem to contain the necessary earmarked funding to restore the 4,500 nursing/midwifery posts lost since 2008.’
Reacting to the Budget, midwifery student Laura Killeen, 20, said: ‘I’m really disappointed that they’re doing nothing to keep the new graduates in the country. They’re creating these big schemes to bring nurses back but they’re doing nothing to keep the nurses that just graduate.
‘I am disappointed because it’s poor patient care, people are going to get hurt and die because of it. With the A&E situation as well, they should be focusing on that and getting more nurses and midwives.’
The Irish Medical Organisation dismissed claims of a €900million increase in spending on the health services next year.
Its president, Dr Ray Walley, said the vast bulk of this spending was required as a supplementary budget to shore up spending for the current year.
He said: ‘Unfortunately the idea of a significant increase in the health budget is a nonsense and the
proposed spending will hardly be sufficient to maintain services at current levels, not to mind increase them to provide patients with the type of services they need and deserve.’
Dr Walley said: ‘Spending on health services over the last number of years has demonstrably been well in excess of the proposed figure of €13.175billion for the coming year, once supplementary budgets have been taken into account, and reports of a €600million budget overrun in health this year suggest that 2015 will be no different.’
Among the main measures in the Budget were plans to introduce free GP care for all children under 12 by the end of next year. The additional free GP care will be after September next year, subject to agreement with the IMO.
Junior health minister Kathleen Lynch said there were approximately 200,000 under- 12s and €10million has been set aside to i nclude them i n the scheme. However she said the overall costing will be determined by negotiations with the IMO and would form part of an ‘overall package’ that would include primary care services such as minor surgery, GP care for over 70s and under-sixes.
However the IMO claimed it is ‘simply not possible’ to extend free GP visit cards to new age cohorts in the absence of a new GP contract for the medical card and the doctor visit card schemes.