Leo: Control of health budget ‘very difficult’
TAOISEACH Leo Varadkar has said keeping control of health spending is ‘very difficult’ but he indicated more oversight was required on hospital funding, as he said it was not clear what some of the funding going to the hospitals sector was spent on.
‘The Health budget is always very difficult to control, just because of rising demand and then medical inflation and lots of other factors,’ he said.
‘But there has been a massive expansion in the Health budget and indeed the number of people working in our health service.’
Mr Varadkar added: ‘There’s been a lot of investment in Health. But it’s always going to be a challenge. But that’s something we’re going to work through with Minister [Stephen] Donnelly and also with the HSE over the period ahead.
‘And we have set aside that reserve in the Budget, roughly an additional billion euros, that Health can draw on, but we’re going to want to make sure that that money is properly deployed and patients actually see the benefit of it.’ Mr Varadkar said in some areas of Health there was ‘very good budget control’, such as in the mental health sector.
He added: ‘But in the hospitals, in particular, there can be a lot of spending and it’s not really clear where the money goes all the time.’
The budget package agreed by the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Party coalition in Dublin included a €5.27billion increase in public spending.
It also included €4.76billion of non-core funding to respond to exceptional circumstances, such as Covid-19 challenges in health provision and the humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine; €1.16billion on tax measures; a further €444million in temporary tax measures; €1.4billion for one-off cost-of-living supports; and €900million on energy credits for households.
Mr Varadkar defended the package, insisting that spending more may have been ‘counter-productive’ as it would have fuelled inflation.
‘The total budget package here today is €14billion, I think it’s probably the second biggest budget package ever, if not in decades,’ he said.