Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are working to the overall Government strategy regarding Sláintecare and climate action. Legislation is now in place, the Climate Change Advisory Council is up and running, we have the overall carbon budgets and the sectoral emissions ceilings will be agreed shortly. The allocation of responsibility for those will be agreed by Government. On the capital side, we have multi-annual ceilings so every Department knows exactly what it has out to 2025. Some Departments have certainty beyond that because of the long-term nature of delivering major capital infrastructure projects, including in the Department of Transport, which will play a key role in that climate transition we all acknowledge we must implement over the period ahead.

On Sláintecare, the Government's commitment to funding healthcare cannot really be called into question. We have seen significant increases in healthcare funding in recent years, aside from Covid-19, even on the core side. The overall budget is approximately €22 million. That has enabled us to fund a major increase in capacity. We have provided funding for the addition of well over 11,000 beds and between 800 to 900 of those are now in place. That is a significant increase on a base of approximately 11,000. Thousands of additional healthcare staff are being recruited which is to be welcomed and there is more recruitment planned. Sanction has been given for further recruitment and ambition. It is going to require a medium-term to long-term commitment to implement Sláintecare in its fullest respect. As you know, the Minister of Health, Deputy Donnelly, is keen to negotiate a new contract with hospital consultants. The principles of that were agreed by Government quite some time ago. We want to see a focus on public work because we want to see the level of waiting time and the number of people on waiting lists in the country reduced dramatically. That is the Government ambition. In terms of the costings and the budgets, we have set out on a multiannual basis what our commitment is on the capital side and we have provided through our actions to date on the current side, very strong resources-----