Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The remaining €900 million includes funding for: Covid; waiting list initiatives; urgent and emergency care measures; Ukrainian supports; staffing for new hospital beds, intensive care beds, community beds and surgical hubs; investment in our workforce, including in advanced practice and new training posts; mental health and social inclusion measures; and new cyber, digital and physical infrastructure capabilities. The budget includes provision for ongoing recruitment of hospital consultants, who will be working on the continued roll-out of services across numerous clinical areas. We are also fully rolling out safe staffing in every hospital, including in every accident and emergency department.

At the same time, we are going to continue to increase productivity. More patients will be treated in the community. More advanced practice nurses will be trained. The new financial management system will be accelerated. More consultants will move to the public-only contract. Productivity information, for the first time, will become central to how services are managed. Patient flow will continue to be improved and reliance on overtime and agency provision will be reduced.

I am commissioning a study on the future costs of healthcare so we can all have a commonly agreed position for how much it will be likely to cost, year by year, in the years to come to get to the goal we are all agreed on, which is universal healthcare. I refer to the vital idea in our Republic that every man, woman and child can get the care they need when they need it, regardless of how much money they earn or how much money a child's parents can access. This is the concept of a public healthcare service that we can all be proud of.

See this speech in context