Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 4 July 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Business of Joint Committee
Hospital Services: Discussion

9:00 am

Photo of Stephen DonnellyStephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I ask Mr. Woods to boil that down. We will have to agree to disagree about the data. This is the Department of Health's capacity review and it unambiguously shows that we do not have significantly fewer healthcare assets than others. It shows that we have more than some countries and less than others. Those are the facts. Given that we are younger and have approximately the same assets, what do other countries do that we do not? Has Mr. Woods identified a number of actions that they have taken which we have not, which do not cost much money? We are facing into the next budget. The fiscal space is tiny. It is a fraction of what Sláintecare envisages as being required for all of these beautiful reforms. We will be living in a very resource-constrained world. I am pushing this so hard because the extra capacity, about which we will have a longer conversation outside of this meeting, costs a fortune. What can we learn from countries which, with the same assets, have solved this problem that we have? What can we learn that does not cost a lot of money?