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

I followed with interest in recent days the debate about how moving towards multi-annual budgets would help us to improve our health services. I am broadly a supporter of multi-annual budgets, not just in the health service but across the board. Before there can be multi-annual budgets, however, one must demonstrate that one is able to keep within annual budgets. We already have a multi-annual budget in health, namely, a ten-year envelope for capital, but have the HSE and the health service managed to keep within that budget? Is there anyone in the House who believes that if there was multi-annual budgeting for current spending, the HSE, which has gone over budget every year for any number of years, would not also go over budget on its multi-annual budget?

I believe it would. It may burn up the money quicker than it does now and we have to take those concerns into account. We are training more general practitioners, GPs, have increased the number of training places and, thankfully, those training places are being filled. We are in negotiations with the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, to restore funding for general practice and to link that to important reforms, including extending eligibility, moving to greater chronic care, medicines management and use of IT. Where I disagree with Deputy Harty in his strong advocacy for Sláintecare is that it is pretty unequivocal that it wants, as well as the 1 million people who already have free GP care, to have an extra 500,000 next year and 500,000 more after that. I think the Deputy is mistaken on that and that we need to do the other thing first.

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