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

First of all, many hospitals in the country are performing really well and do not have patients on trolleys whereas they would have in the past. They have seen waiting lists come down significantly on what they were in the past. That is happening because of good management, more staff and more resources. We have a larger health budget now than ever before, and rightly so because our population is growing and ageing.

With regard to the specifics of the question the Deputy has asked, there has been an unprecedented level of investment by this Government in the health service workforce in recent years. We have seen consistent growth in the workforce each year since 2020, with the growth in the number of staff recruited in 2023 being the highest since the foundation of the HSE. There are now 26,172 more staff working in our health service than there were at the beginning of this Government. That includes almost 8,500 additional nurses and midwives, more than 4,000 additional health and social care professionals and nearly 3,000 additional doctors and dentists. That is a 22% increase, meaning that for every five people working in the health service in 2020, we now have six.

It is true that in November 2023, the CEO of the HSE announced a pause in all recruitment, with the exception of consultants and graduate nurses and doctors in formal training programmes. This recruitment pause, which was put in place as part of a suite of control measures, included an instruction to reduce expenditure on agency staff and management consultants across the HSE. The reality is that the HSE had already exceeded its 2023 funded workforce targets, which was not sustainable. There are now 146,500 staff working in our health service. The HSE was funded to recruit just over an additional 6,000 staff in 2023. In reality, however, it hired well over 8,000, meaning that it had more than 2,200 staff more than it was funded for. Funding for an additional 2,268 staff has been secured by the Minister for Health. There is much talk about recruitment freezes, but there are a lot more people coming into the health service, and they are badly needed. We will continue to ensure the health service grows, expands and is invested in as our population grows and becomes more demanding given that we have an ageing population.

While we acknowledge that some hospitals are under significant pressure, if we look at the health system as a whole, we will see that waiting lists are down. Trolley numbers are down. Staffing numbers and bed numbers are up. We need to focus on hospitals like UHL that are under significant pressure and others that are feeling pressure, but we also need to recognise the successes of many hospitals that are performing really well for patients.

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