Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I assume it is. I will double-check that for the Deputy. I suspect probably a little more is being spent than that.

I am a big fan of early supported discharge. It makes a lot of sense to get patients home more quickly to do their rehabilitation at home and that produces better clinical outcomes. Unfortunately, like a lot of savings posited in health care, it is not quite that simple. I have studied the ESRI report in detail and so has the HSE. We intend to extend the early supported discharge programme, if we can. However, it is not as simple as merely stating it will save millions of euro. Commentators always put that across in health. It requires us setting up a community infrastructure first and there is an initial investment cost before one can make any savings, and the savings only arise if one then reduces capacity in the hospital because there is the cost of setting up the service in the community. The saving only arises if one starts taking staff and beds out of hospitals and I would not do that because we need those staff and beds. If I can free up staff and beds in hospitals, I want to get patients off the waiting lists and into those beds. Unfortunately, there is not a net saving. There is an efficiency, but not a saving.

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