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

The amount of additional funding for disability services next year, as announced in yesterday's budget, is €65 million. Approximately €50 million of this will be used to improve and expand existing services and cover additional pay costs etc. The other €15 million will be used for new developments. That is just in the Department of Health. Additional funding is being provided to the Department of Education and Skills to cater for an extra 1,000 special needs assistants next year. They will provide additional educational supports to people with disabilities. In the social protection area, another increase of €5 a week for people with disabilities will kick in from March, as it did this year. The same increase will be given to those who care for them. The exact breakdown of services like additional respite and personal assistance hours will be set out in the service plan in the normal way. Those are the facts of the additional funding for disability that was announced yesterday. Crucially, funding is to be made available for the decision-making service within the Department of Justice and Equality to allow us to proceed to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This is something the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, has fought very hard for.

Deputy Adams started by criticising our decision to increase health spending by €685 million next year. It is the biggest increase in health spending in at least ten years. It is the biggest health budget in the history of the State. If we are asking any questions about that among ourselves, we should be asking why additional resources are not providing better results. The National Treatment Purchase Fund is one of the areas that will see additional investment, which is very welcome. I acknowledge the participation of Fianna Fáil in calling for these additional funds. The increase from approximately €20 million this year to €55 million next year will allow us to do many more high-volume procedures on hips, knees and cataracts etc. I think we will see some real progress in those areas. The Deputy has a big problem in the question he asked. He said at the outset that everyone knows it costs €691 million a year for the health service "just to stand still".

I do not accept that. There is something profoundly wrong with the health service if it would cost that much every year just to stand still. We estimate the cost of maintaining the existing level of service at approximately €400 million, in the region of 3%, which would be the norm internationally. If Sinn Féin and Deputy Adams really believe that it costs €691 million a year for the health service just to stand still, they have a big question to answer. The Deputy may not have read his own documents on Sinn Féin's alternative budget for 2018.

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