Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This morning, I believe, the Cabinet allocated an additional €500 million to the health service, which is extraordinary in itself in so far as it illustrates what we had all been saying at the time of the publication of the health service plan at the beginning of this year and prior to the election, which was that the budget for health was insufficient and represented a massaging of the figures before the general election. I pointed out that the figures were grossly inaccurate. The CEO of the HSE said that the health service was under a death sentence and that the level of money provided in the budget was wholly inadequate and had left a significant shortfall. The then Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar, had indicated that there was a sufficiency of funding available to the health service.

If one goes back over the past three to four years, every year at budget time we essentially got false figures on health.

They could never have stood up and subsequently did not, including the infamous €680 million supplementary provision for 2014. We now know because it was stated by the former Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, that he knew the game was up when he lost the battle on that particular budget. Last year, a €600 million supplementary provision was provided.

The head of the HSE said that the current budget would only meet existing levels of service, that is, the level of service provided in 2015. Will the Taoiseach indicate if the €500 million allocation announced today will result in additional home care packages and mental health services and address acute hospital waiting lists and the shortage of funding in acute tertiary hospitals? The Taoiseach will be aware that the figures for May show that there are 509,000 people on the outpatient waiting list and that there are approximately 75,000 people waiting for surgery, which is a 50% increase on the 50,000 figure for 2014. These are extraordinary figures by any yardstick. They illustrate a failure over recent years to provide any meaningful health service provision. Will the extra €500 million provide additional services or is it a sticking plaster to enable delivery of current levels of service across the board?

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