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

We are going to act on this and the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, is going to meet the chief officers of the nine community healthcare organisations next week to see how we can resolve this issue. I come back to the basic, important, and fundamental point that the budget for home help has increased by 50% in four years. It has gone up from €300 million to €450 million this year. Wage inflation is about 2% or 3% a year, while demographics in aging might account for 1% or 2% extra a year. That is nowhere close to a 50% increase. What is happening commonly, unfortunately, in health and social care is that huge amounts of additional money are being put in; much more than is required to cover demographics and inflation. Yet, citizens, patients and people are not getting the increased service they should be getting. We must have learned by now that when it comes to health and social care, just allocating more money all the time is not the solution. If it were, the 50% increase in the past four years would have provided a much greater and better service. We need to listen to the advice of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council on that, as well as to our own common sense. Major increases in spending on health and social care in recent years to record levels, beyond demographics or inflation, have not provided the better services that people deserve, that patients need and for which taxpayers pay. The solution is not always more money.

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