Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We heard evidence from Mr. Tony O'Brien at yesterday's meeting of the Committee on the Future of Healthcare on the future needs of health care provision and the investment requirements. It is quite alarming, taking into account the demographics and the changing nature of how we will provide medical care in the years ahead, that our capacity system could just fall over. It is important that we get it right and that we base it on what we believe will be the challenges and demands on the health service in the years ahead. More importantly, however, we need to take into account that we will need more community care and primary care investment to help ensure the acute hospital system is functioning in the way that is intended, namely, with a focus on acute care.

Overall, for this review to be done right, it has to be at one remove from those who will be making the decisions on funding. My concern is that they would perhaps talk down the demand that will have to be met in order that it would not look like they were raising the bar too high and that the funding would not be put in place as a result. There might then be accusations from this side of the House that this had been done for other reasons. We want the review to be impartial and to have integrity. This will be the bedrock on the capital investment side of health care in the acute hospital system for the next number of years but also in the community care and primary care systems.

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