The Labour party’s health spokesperson Duncan Smith TD has called on the Minister for Health to re engage with Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe who, he said, has become “the steward of our health service.”
“He seems to be making the call here,” Mr Smith told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
Health was a demand led service, he said. It was not like other government departments. “We have the largest population we've ever had. I don't think any of these workers that are there, no health care assistants, or no consultant hospital doctors are swinging the lead. They're all working to the pin of their collar. And we have a recruitment and retention crisis.
We can't hold on to staff. They're looking to other health services in the UK and Australia and America. And this decision over the last week by this Government not to fund our health service is just going to exacerbate the situation.”
The health service, despite its high budget, was not being funded to the level that was required, said Mr Smith. It was going to require between €2.4 billion and €2.7 billion.
The recruitment freeze needed to be lifted, he urged. There needed to be a step change with regard to funding for the health service.
Mr Smith called on the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly to outline to the Dáil how he is going to lift the recruitment freeze.
“Basically, we've heard nothing from him in the last week. We've had a tweet about the rugby and we've had a tweet about vaping. We've heard nothing about this crisis. I mean, when you have announced, as they have, a recruitment freeze in relation to health care systems and non consultant hospital doctors, this is going to cause massive harm.
"And we've heard nothing from the minister. This is the man who is in charge of our health service ultimately, and we need to hear from him in the Dáil as to how he's going to fund our health service and how he's going to ensure that we have the staff to provide the care that's needed.
“We can't come to this stage where we have a budget that's a piece of fiction. And then we have, six days after the budget, totally unwrapping what was announced last Tuesday. I mean, that just can't continue to go on.
“So, yeah, we do have a problem with overspending in our budget. But as I said, people don't present in emergency departments because they're well, they present because they're sick, they're on waiting lists because they need care. So there is a huge problem here.
“But we can't come down hard. It is not like any other government department. It's not like delaying the building of a road which might be inconvenient, delaying the provision of care and impacting our national clinical programmes here.”
Mr Smith acknowledged that the Department of Health was going to have to “play by the rules” and would have to try and find savings. “There's stuff that they can do. The HSE is a massive landlord, residential landlord. It's an area they don't want to be in. They can sell properties, they can continue to find savings.
“At the end of the day, they're going to have to get funding because we do have a bigger population and it's a demand-led service and that's a reality. We can't just put a cap on it and expect whatever that means. If our population continues to grow by over 5 million now and people are going to continue to get sick.”
