Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I look forward to the meeting of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight tomorrow evening. I am sure the Minister understands why we need the figures for the budget preparation.

I refer to what the Minister stated is provided for health. He is providing €1.5 billion in funding for the health service this year. That will be in the base for 2025, but the Government is then providing an existing level of service funding of €1.2 billion. For more than a year, Sinn Féin has rightly called out the Government's deliberate underfunding of the health service. That is something that was sharply criticised as well by both the Fiscal Advisory Council and the CEO of the HSE. The latter warned at the time of the last budget that it posed a significant punitive risk to the public and that has proven to be the case. Our claim that the health budget was a work of fiction, with damaging consequences for patients and staff, has been vindicated in this budget. Today's announcement shows the underfunding and mismanagement of the health budget. I welcome the fact that the Minister is putting it right, but it does prove the case that last year's budget was wrong for the health service.

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