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

It is absolutely not our policy to ignore it; our policy is to develop a road map to implement it. The Minister for Health has been tasked with doing that and we will discuss it in more detail at the special Cabinet meeting on Friday. I have asked him to develop a roadmap to do exactly that before the end of the year. However, it requires development, which needs to be built on. I had the privilege of meeting the academics and others from Trinity College who were involved in drawing this up and at the meeting, they admitted to me that were one to implement the first year in full as they proposed, the cost would be an additional €1.3 billion. I said to them and I meant it - and everyone in the House knows this full well - that €1.3 billion in the first year would not be affordable. It would not be possible to implement the plan as they proposed it because we would not be able to find that level of money in year one. Pages 34 and 36 of the Labour Party's alternative budget outline the details for implementing Sláintecare. The total the party provides is €626.9 million.

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