Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I welcome any efforts made by the Government to reduce the costs on families in accessing healthcare. There is no doubt that health has a significant cost to many people and that it is a barrier for many people in accessing healthcare. The level of ill-health is far higher among people who live in lower socioeconomic groups, and people's life expectancy is far lower in those areas too. Every single step the Minister and Government take, which reduces the cost to people, must have a positive benefit for their access to healthcare and for their health.

A key question for me is that when people look at the health service at the moment the vast majority of people will identify other issues rather than cost causing a barrier to accessing healthcare. For the vast majority there is a situation where the lack of capacity in the health service is the barrier for people accessing healthcare. I am conscious that whenever the Government gets rid of certain charges, for example for GP care for children, it can actually make it harder to access GP care in the round. If one reduces a cost it creates more demand for service, and if that capacity is reducing in size it is actually making it harder for the general public to access that service. We have an incredible situation where last year 400 GPs left Ireland in the first six months of that year. Yet, we have many GPs at the moment closing their lists so people cannot access those lists to get a GP. If a person is a newcomer to this country, or if somebody moves from one end of the country to the other, he or she is unlikely to be able to get access to a GP list at the moment.

It is also important for me to raise the issue of Our Lady's Hospital in Navan. Just a couple of days ago there were 31 people who had been triaged and who still had not been seen by a nurse or doctor in relation to what was wrong with them. That is just the number of people who had made it past triage station, not the number of people who were in the waiting room at the hospital such is the level of demand that exists in Navan at the moment for accident and emergency services. Again, most people would come to that scenario and say that we need more capacity there to be able to deal with the demand. What we have, however, is reducing capacity unfortunately with ambulance bypasses and so on. I am told that the HSE senior management have contacted the doctor-on-call service to ask them what staff they need for the closure of Navan hospital accident and emergency department. I commend the Minister on the reduction of costs to the citizen in accessing healthcare but I would really urge him to focus on the key capacity issue, which is the biggest barrier to good health in this country.

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