Extra €4bn in past four years has failed utterly to reverse crisis in health service

MORE than €4bn extra has been pumped into the health service in the past four years, as the number of patients on trolleys and on hospital waiting lists continues to spiral.

In Budget 2019, the department of Health Minister Simon Harris, pictured right, has been allocated an extra €1.7bn. But that has been criticised as an attempt to ‘disguise the failures’ in the health system. Fianna Fáil’s health spokesman Stephen Donnelly described the Government’s Health budget as ‘spin’. ‘It is an optical illusion designed to make the Government look busy while disguising its failures. In spite of beginning the year with the largest budget in the history of the State, the Health Minister will end the year with the longest waiting lists in the history of the State and will have overspent by €750m,’ he said.

The health budget began to increase in 2015 when Leo Varadkar was health minister. As the budget has grown, so too has the crisis. The latest figures for outpatient waiting lists from the National Treatment Purchase Fund show that more than 515,000 people were waiting for an outpatient hospital appointment in September. In comparison to 2014, the numbers on the outpatient list have grown by 33%.

Numbers waiting on the inpatient list have risen by 17%, from 63,105 in 2014 to 74,189 in August. Last month, 7,765 patients were waiting on trolleys, up 19% since September 2014.

The additional funds allocated in 2019 will see €75m go to the NTPF, up from €55m last year.