Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach for his reply. In recent weeks, there have been quite a few stories about the impact of personnel shortages on key services. The failure to hire, and critically to retain, key people has led to a serious waste of public resources and is contributing to rising budgets. The most obvious example of this can be found in the health sector, where basic planning and cost controls are much harder when the ability to roster and schedule activity is undermined by a failure to fill vacant positions.

I presume that the Taoiseach is aware of the current campaign by the Irish Hospital Consultants Association. However, that campaign is not needed; going through the data, we can see that there are significant shortages and vacancies in key consultant areas. For example, in Cork city alone, 13 consultants have resigned in the past three years, and ten of those were involved in delivering cancer care. Some of these key positions have been filled by locums but some remain vacant, and this is replicated across the country. I know the Taoiseach can give us the macro figures and say that we are getting more people in than are leaving, but the bottom line is underneath the figures. There is a real crisis in the retention of key personnel in our health services. Given how central this has been to health budgets under this and the previous Government, has he received a report on the impact of vacancies on services?

The Taoiseach will also remember that the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has said that, in the past, one of the most important reasons for the new phenomenon of significant overspends in the health system is the habit that developed in recent years of Ministers promising levels of service that have not been planned or funded. This has led to a deeply wasteful stop-start approach to service delivery. The Taoiseach has admitted that his decision, and that of his predecessor, to operate the HSE without a management board has caused serious problems in planning and cost control. Equally, he has repeatedly promised that measures are in place to avoid the need for significant supplementaries in health. He has said that repeatedly and told the House that any overspends would be identified and published without delay. In that context, will he comment on the fact that spending pressure are already evident and that the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, appears to be repeating last year's approach of denying any concerns until as late as possible in the year?

Finally, on Sunday, the Minister reported that 800,000 extra home help hours will be delivered. There is a serious and profound disconnect between official statements of that kind and the reality on the ground. In each healthcare area, people are being told that there is no funding left and that there is a curtailment of home help services across the board. The Taoiseach said last week that he was trying to get to the bottom of the issue. More than 6,000 people are on the waiting list for home help and no cover is being provided for annual or sick leave. The budgets appear to have dried up, and yet we get the mantra from central level that there is nothing to see here and everything is fine because there will be additional positions. Will the Taoiseach comment on that?

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