Ms Laura Magahy:

I thank the Deputy for that great question and I am sure it is one that was widely debated when the Oireachtas committee was formulating its report. There is an absolute commitment to a universal health system and to separating public and private care. The objective of Sláintecare is to build and reinforce the public infrastructure, including staffing levels, and that is where the majority of today's funding is going. Sláintecare does not say, interestingly, that there should be no private care but that there should be a separation of public from private. In looking at how that would take place, the de Buitléir report last year recommended a series of steps. Critical to implementation is a new public-only consultant contract which will come into play from January next year. In public hospitals consultants can only provide public care and no private work will be permitted. That will separate the public and the private and make the differentiation between the systems much clearer. If a patient is in the public system, he or she will get care in public hospitals by publicly funded staff. That is a very important initiative. There are 300 consultant posts funded at €250,000 each in the budget that was announced yesterday and they will be rolling out next year.

There will always be some resistance to reform but what we have seen is that people are very willing to come on board with the principles of Sláintecare. They were obviously very well considered when they were written because they are things to which people can sign up and the principles of Sláintecare are understood by everybody. The delivery of them will be nuanced, depending on people's perspective. We have certainly found, and Covid has demonstrated in spades, that when people see the bigger picture and see where they fit within it, they are willing to go with it and are pleased to do so. They like that leadership and vision. I would say that has held and that the budget, to be honest, is a lever of change. The budget today will ensure that this aspect of Sláintecare is implemented at speed over the next year.