Brian Walsh (Galway West, Fine Gael)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle and the Minister of State, Deputy Shortall, for facilitating me in raising the issue of public funding for the Galway Hospice Foundation.

The matter of how the State supports hospice care is of massive public interest and importance, given the number of us who have been affected either directly or indirectly by cancer. There will be few people, therefore, who will not appreciate the significance of the role played by a hospice in offering comfort and support to patients and their families. I had the privilege last Friday evening of visiting the Galway Hospice facility in Renmore with the Taoiseach where we witnessed at first hand the exceptional care provided by the hospice for members of the public.

The Leas-Cheann Comhairle will be well aware of the service Galway Hospice provides and he has been a great supporter of the facility during the years. He will know that for over two decades the hospice has served the people of Galway city, County Galway and beyond in a way that is almost impossible for us to quantify or measure. All Galwegians know in their hearts the true value of the work the hospice does and of the thousands of lives it has touched, and this excellence has been independently and internationally recognised. It is the only hospice in Ireland to hold accreditation by the International Society for Quality in Health Care. In May it became the only hospice in Europe to receive an international quality improvement award for outstanding achievement in the delivery of quality care.

I raise this matter because of the significant disproportionality and inequality in the way hospices receive funding from the Health Service Executive. Last year, for example, Galway Hospice received €3.6 million in funding from the HSE, in comparison to €11.1 million provided for Milford Hospice in Limerick. The amount received in Galway was just over €300,000 per hospice bed compared to €444,000 per bed in Marymount Hospice in Cork, giving rise to a differential of almost 50% in the level of funding provided for the two hospices.

Not only is Galway Hospice underfunded, it is also under-resourced. Thenumber of consultant hours per hospice bed in Galway is also at variance with other facilities in the HSE west region. It received 1.2 consultant-hours per bed in comparison with 3.4 consultant-hours per bed in Donegal, for example. In spite of being disadvantaged by these inequalities, Galway hospice has continued to lead the way in terms of the provision of an exceptional service.

Galway hospice has had to rely largely on volunteer funding and requires approximately €1.5 million per annum through fund raising and voluntary donations in order to continue to provide the level of service it gives. It is a testament to that service and to the esteem in which the facility is held by the people of Galway and the wider region, that it is consistently able to raise that €1.5 million on an annual basis to meet the deficit in funding provided by the HSE. As the Leas-Cheann Comhairle is aware, the initial construction of the 12 bed facility at Renmore was financed entirely by voluntary funding, no call was made on the Government purse for the capital expenditure for the hospice. The deficit in finance received by Galway hospice compared to other facilities across the western region has also hampered its development and prevented its expansion. The burden imposed on it by this under-funding has meant that it cannot comply with its service requirement and it remains 14 beds short of that set out by the report of the national advisory committee on palliative care which was prepared back in 2001. The argument is that if this facility was properly funded, it would be in a position to direct all of its fund-raising efforts towards financing the plans it has to expand the facility to meet the needs of the region. The shortage of hospice beds in Galway is also emphasised by the number of cancer deaths which occur annually at the region's principal hospital, University Hospital Galway, UHG. Some 47.5% of all deaths in UHG are cancer related compared to just 17% in Limerick Regional Hospital and 21.5% in Cork University Hospital. In both of these areas, properly structured and financed hospice facilities exist.

I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Shortall to carry out a review of funding for hospice facilities to ensure that greater equality exists, that a level playing field exists and to demonstrate that the Government recognises the exceptional work being carried out by all hospice facilities in the State.

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