Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Doran for his very detailed presentation. As someone who has several family members working in both the medical and nursing professions, I am very much aware of the difficulties that exist in our hospital system. I am approaching this from the budgetary point of view and in 2011 and 2012, the total budget for health care exceeded the total amount of money collected in income tax. This year, as I understand it, the budget for health care will be approximately 90% of the total income tax take. Over the last number of years, despite the downward trend in terms of tax yields and the budgetary constraints under which the Government is operating, increments continue to be paid in the public sector whereas in the private sector, salaries have decreased by as much as 40%. If one takes the legal profession, for example, on average, young solicitors have experienced a drop in salary of up to 40%. In terms of the way forward in the health sector, we are not going to be in a position to increase the budget, certainly in the next three to four years. In fact, we will be very lucky to hold the budget at its current level. In that context, how can savings be made in some areas so that we can actually maintain, if not increase, the levels of front line nursing staff in the system? I agree that there are enormous demands being made of those in the front line. The INMO's own report gives a very comprehensive overview of changes in the level of day-care, where the number of procedures has increased from 675,000 to over 804,000. The number of outpatient appointments has increased also from 2 million per annum to more than 3.5 million. There have been huge changes which have placed huge demands on staff. Nevertheless, we still have a budgetary problem and I would like to hear suggestions from the INMO on how the budget could be more carefully managed so that we can maintain, if not increase the number of nursing staff in the system.