Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are a number of points to make. First, there is an increased focus on transitional care beds, that is, lower level step-down care. We all know that the cost of keeping someone in an acute setting is anecdotally said to be in the region of €7,000 a week, and in a community setting, a community hospital, about €1,000 a week. This is a matter of opening more transitional care beds. Obviously, we are increasing capacity within the acute system simultaneously. We are renegotiating the contract with the GPs. We hope to have that completed by Christmas. This is ambitious and there is no guarantee it will happen, but we are very confident. A number of different measures will be involved in that which will move towards that Sláintecare ideal of bringing more and more.

One of my hobby horses is telehealth, which I think offers enormous potential for bringing healthcare closer to the person using primary care in that the GP can access consultant guidance and advice and cover there and then from the primary care centre. I am concentrating more on mental health on my side of things with telepsychiatry, whereby we do not have to have a consultant psychiatrist on site at every emergency department, ED, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. We can have provided by telehealth one person in a hub providing consultant psychiatry to six or seven sites in a 24-hour period.

There are many different strands to this that will be dealt with, and this will be led out by Laura Magahy. There is about €20 million, I think, to drive this forward. I see the argument made on Twitter and such places that we only allocated €20 million for the implementation of Sláintecare this year, but Sláintecare is a policy implementation, a shift in practice and so on. It does not require that kind of massive €2 billion funding straight up. As one lessens the level of complexity and lowers the level of access for people and brings care to them closest to their homes, one can avoid an awful lot of the very expensive, reactive, acute-led medical care that has evolved in the country. Everyone recognises the current system's dysfunctionality. I think everyone understands and accepts the vision of Sláintecare and agrees that it is the way forward. However, there will be many steps along the way to reorienting a ship the size of the HSE, and a number of those will begin in the year ahead.