Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There was a lot there but I agree with everything the Deputy said. Essentially, we have one goal, which is universal healthcare, and there are three elements to that. The first is cost, which is largely a Department of Health and Government issue. The HSE does not need to be overly involved in that. It is about reducing costs to patients and a lot of progress is being made in that regard.

The second and third elements are speeding up access, and strengthening services and rolling out new ones. We are doing that, as the Deputy alluded to, through two big steps, namely, increasing capacity and, just as important, reform. We are adding beds, building new hospitals and growing the workforce and we have put in place an entire new community healthcare service through enhanced community care. There is a massive investment in capacity, but capacity is not enough. At the same time, we have to change the way we run our health services. We need significant investment in e-health. We need the Sláintecare, public-only contract to be taken up in order that we can extend rostering hours, which will make more services in hospitals available to patients in the evenings and throughout the weekend, as needed. We saw the big impact it had on trolley numbers at the start of this year and we know it will have a big impact on waiting lists as well.

The Estimates before us are for exactly that.

Many line items relate to reducing costs for patients, such as eliminating hospital charges and free contraception, which has been received very well by people who can avail of it. It is expensive and a lot of money has been allocated in the Estimates for that. They also include State funding for IVF and other means of assisted human reproduction services and so forth. Many line items relate to building capacity, such as 6,000 additional doctors, nurses, health and social care professionals and increasing the workforce across the board; building the hospitals, adding hundreds more beds; and critically at the same time pursuing reform. There is funding for the consultant contract, for improving the lot of non-consultant hospital doctors, NCHDs, and for broadening supports for GPs. I fully agree that there is a problem with access in certain areas. We do not have enough GPs in certain parts of the country. I spent most of the weekend with the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, at its conference where we spent a lot of time discussing short-term and long-term solutions to that issue.