Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will move on to a second issue before I run out of time. This is addressed mainly to the Department. At a recent meeting of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight, we discussed the implementation of Sláintecare with IFAC, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. The task of the council, according to its website, is to assess and endorse the Government's official economic forecasts, assess budgetary forecasts, assess the Government's fiscal stance and monitor fiscal rules. Something like a major restructuring of the healthcare system, which is one of the biggest costs in this State, would be central to IFAC's work. We discussing this matter and I will cite the transcript of that discussion. Mr. Sebastian Barnes representing IFAC said, "there is incredibly limited information [on Sláintecare] and this is a big problem". I put it to IFAC that this was very concerning. Dr. Eddie Casey answered as follows:

We looked at this in an analytical note before and the questions we have of Sláintecare are huge and wide-ranging. We do not know the progress to date in terms of what has been spent on it. We do not know what a proper costing of implementing Sláintecare looks like because it has not been updated.

I then asked IFAC to be clear that it does not know what has been spent to date or the cost of full implementation. Dr. Casey answered that IFAC did not really know what will be spent beyond one year, and it only has one year into the future of what will be spent. He then suggested that even that information had narrowed.

I am not sure if we will know next year, which is unfortunate. We do not know some of most basic things around Sláintecare. Would Mr. Watt like to respond to that from IFAC?