Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

One of the first things the Government did from a healthcare perspective, within weeks of taking office, was to try to get agreement across all parties in the House to an approach to healthcare that would be consistent regardless of who was in government over the next ten years. We are committed to this process. Like other parties in the House, Deputy Kelly's party signed up and committed to an approach that we are now following. The Sláintecare vision is to achieve a universal single-tier health and social care system where everyone has equal access to services based on need and not ability to pay. The Deputy is trying to label my party as one that is pursuing healthcare with an ideological lens. I am not quite sure why he is doing so because the facts do not bear it out.

The implementation of Sláintecare reform is a priority for the Government and the Department of Health. We all recognise this is a long-term process but we need to continue to progress it. The Sláintecare action plan for 2019 includes a specific work stream on access and waiting lists. Sláintecare emphasises the need to invest in increased capacity, which is happening, while shifting the balance of care from hospitals to community services for better health outcomes and a more sustainable health service. Reducing waiting times for patients for hospital operations and procedures is a key priority for the Government. Obviously, the focus is on the public health system and not the private health system.

We have a challenge in terms of the transition, as the Deputy knows well. We need to make sure we use private hospitals and primary care facilities outside a hospital setting to ensure we can keep people out of hospital and when there is overcrowding in public hospitals that we have routes to try to deal with it in terms of waiting times and trolley numbers. This is what the National Treatment Purchase Fund is about in terms of sourcing bed capacity and operational capacity for much of the work that should be happening in public hospitals but cannot happen because of overcrowding or undercapacity. There is a role for private hospitals in the short to medium term. In future, there may also be a role for them if people want to pay more for a certain type of treatment. However, we must get to a point where, in terms of standards, healthcare provision is not linked to income or ability to pay for a different type of hospital experience. This is what Sláintecare is all about. It is what my party supports and, as far as I am aware, it is what virtually every other political party in the House has also supported.

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