Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank members for their time, questions and ideas. There are several pieces of follow-up work that we will do, be it on the National Maternity Hospital and various technical notes people have. My view is that this is a really exciting budget. It is a lot of money. There is a lot of technical stuff happening in the background in respect of financial reporting and IT systems on e-health and enablers but, ultimately, there are a few really exciting things happening in this budget. The first is around beds. It is a massive increase in beds at approximately €342 million in terms of acute, critical care, sub-acute and community beds. They will make an enormous difference and catch us up on the 2018 capacity review. The first big chunk of investment is in building out the capacity. Obviously, that funding is not just for the physical beds. Arguably, that is the easy bit. It is also about the staff and all the professionals we put around it.

The second is what I think is an unprecedented investment in community and social care. This is the big structural change so we have €408 million going into this. It involves home care packages, community health networks, community specialist teams, GP access to diagnostics and some of the issues Deputy Shortall and I were just talking about in terms of reducing the costs of access to care.

Significant additional funding is going into disability and mental health, something I know everyone on the committee is committed to. A new piece about which I am really excited involves nearly €150 million for the national strategies. Before I sat down with the committee, I came from meeting the people involved in the national trauma strategy. A lot of funding is now being provided for that. There is also funding for maternity care and a lot of funding for women's health, paediatrics, dementia, palliative care, the carer's strategy and positive ageing. The various clinical leads and clinical groups across the system in these really important care pathways have the funding to implement some wonderful strategies that have been put in place in recent years. There is a big investment in public health and well-being. The Chairman asked a question about the national drugs strategy, which comes to €53 million. There are new drugs and various things we discussed. A really important piece is the access to care fund, which will involve €130 million from the NTPF, an additional €210 million, which is a new allocation, alternative care pathways, and screening and hospital restart grants. That brings us to in excess of €400 million, which we need to tackle these waiting lists.

We have probably set ambitious targets right across the board. We will hit as many of them as we can. It is entirely possible we will not hit them all. We have set really demanding targets in so many different ways. All of our amazing clinicians have been working flat out and are, quite frankly, exhausted from the pandemic and all the additional work they have had to do in the pandemic. The budget in front of us is really exciting because it allocates money in new ways, be it the national strategies or community and care services as well as building up acute services. I ask for the committee's patience and understanding as we try to hit all these targets, ultimately to make things better for patients and the public in the year we are having and with our amazing clinicians and non-clinical staff across the system. They are working so hard and are so tired. They have done such an incredible job. As the pandemic dies down, the focus of the committee and I along with that of the Oireachtas, our health service and the Department will quite rightly be on all of these wonderful areas and getting them going.