Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The recent announcement by the Government of its capital spending plan amounts to very little, and is extremely unambitious. It is alarming to note that in 2020, even with this plan, we will still have the second lowest capital spend per GDP in Europe.

As the Sinn Féin spokesperson on health, I found the particular announcement by the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, and the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, of a 2016-21 health capital allocation of €3.061 billion to be utterly farcical. Much of what is involved has already been signalled, if not already committed to, and there is a relatively small additional sum of €568 million.

I noted with interest some trends in capital spending on health over the past number of years and the expected capital spend for the years ahead. The figures I found were: €598 million in 2008, €366 million in 2010, €414 million committed for 2016 and €600 million in 2021. This means that even in nominal terms the spending on the health capital budget will only be the same in 2021 as it was in 2008, 13 years earlier. In real terms, taking inflation into account and adjusted per capita, this represents a significant cut over these years, and over all the years in between, courtesy of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour. According to CSO figures, the population will have grown by 8.3% over that time and if one also assumes average annual inflation of 1.5%, then the real per capitacut to the health capital budget is exactly one third.

A litany of events have shown how disorganised our health service is as a result of the Government's policy. Fine Gael and Labour have failed those in the hospital system and this announcement will do little to alleviate the serious problems that exist. The Government is ever quick to use public money to buy a headline and pretend it is solving a problem. This so-called plan contains no mention of additional capacity in the Government's stated intent to "replace, upgrade and refurbish" community based nursing units for older people and accommodation for people with disabilities.

Emergency department services have been at crisis point for some time, as regularly highlighted by the trolley watch survey carried out by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO. The trolley crisis is not just an emergency department crisis but a symptom of the malaise that is endemic across the wider health system. It is primarily due to a lack of capacity resulting from the chronic failure by the Government to provide adequate funding to the public health system and there is no reference in this plan to addressing this serious problem.

Our health emergency is a crisis of unequal access to a health system which has an overall capacity far short of what is needed. Demand will increase year on year. From the older person languishing on a hospital trolley in an overcrowded accident and emergency department to the young child waiting two years for speech and language therapy, the root problem is undercapacity. The Minister needs to cut out the bluff and secure funds to get patients off lists and into procedures that can both save and enrich lives.

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