Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I have a question for the Minister on the issue of mental health services. Before I deal with that, I want to make a couple of points about the deal between the State and the Private Hospitals Association. There have been various criticisms of that deal, some of which are valid and others not. One criticism is that it was bad value for money because there was only a 36% bed occupancy rate during the crisis. I do not think it would have been possible to foresee in advance that the occupancy rate would be at that level. The State had to err on the side of caution by booking a large number of hospitals and a large number of beds. As such, this particular criticism is not a valid one. However, what is a valid criticism is the question of value for money around the expense of hiring beds compared with the cost of doing so in other jurisdictions. In the UK, where there is a Tory Government, the deal between the state and the private hospitals worked out at €10,332 per bed. In this State, the cost worked out at €44,213 per bed.

That is four times the rate that was paid in the UK. The beneficiaries of this were largely people who were not exactly in need of huge extra funding, such as Larry Goodman, owner of the Blackrock and Hermitage clinics; Denis O'Brien of the Beacon Hospital; the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre, UPMC; the Bon Secours order, and so on. I have said it before and I will say it again: the deal should be published in full. We did not get that commitment from the previous Minister. What is the current Minister's position on it?

On the question of mental health, it is generally accepted that demand for mental health services will increase in the wake of lockdown. The only question is to what extent. Some 6% of the spend in our health service goes on mental health, which is half or less than half of the equivalent spend in other European states. We have relied heavily on charities whose fundraising sources have been hit very hard over the course of the lockdown. Doubling the spend on mental health services is a modest demand and it should be done within the framework of an Irish national health service. Sharing the Vision makes 100 recommendations for changes in mental health service but contains no costings. When will the costings be published?

The point is often made in this Chamber, or in the other Chamber across the way, that there was unanimous cross-party support for Sláintecare. That is not correct. I was a member of the Sláintecare committee for a year. I listened to all the evidence and supported many of the reforms in the report but did not vote for it because it fell short of what all the evidence indicated was needed, which is an Irish national health service involving the nationalisation of the private hospital sector in this State. The parties involved pulled back from making such a bold recommendation. The Covid crisis meant that healthcare was provided not on the basis of the size of one's wallet but on the basis of one's health needs. That should be the case for cancer services, heart disease, depression, and all other illnesses. Unfortunately, Professor John Crown was correct when he said in the Sunday Business Post on 21 June that the new programme for Government plans to copper-fasten the two-tier health service and instead of taking a step forward towards an Irish national health service, it is actually a step back. That is my observation. My questions relate to the mental health services and the publication of the deal with the private hospitals.

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