David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)

What is going on in the area of health? We are 24 hours on from the budget and it is impossible to know where any of the money announced in it will be spent. What is clear is that the vast majority of the additional funding announced yesterday for health is for existing levels of service. I spoke with senior officials in the Department of Health. They informed me that this is down to the Department of public expenditure and reform and how it presented expenditure booklet relating to the budget. People are asking where all the money is going to go. There is no sense of how much additional funding will go to the national cancer strategy. There is no sense of how much will go to the cardiac strategy or the maternity strategy. There is no sense of how much there will be to spend on new drugs. There is no sense of how much money will be spent on almost all of the services right across the board. We are 24 hours on, and I cannot answer those questions. There are advocate and patient groups that simply do not know either. This is the worst presentation of a health budget I have seen. What makes it worse is that the majority of the so-called additional funding is simply for the health service to stand still in the context of existing levels of service. The Minister simply has not been able to win the additional support, funding and resources for the health service that we need. Instead of admitting that, she dresses up what was in the budget as new measures, when in fact it is simply for the health service to stand still.

Stephen Donnelly announced the provision of 3,000 hospital beds prior to last year's local elections. I watched on as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs, Senators and councillors were all out welcoming these beds in their constituencies and in the places they live and represent. What was announced in the budget yesterday were 220 so-called new beds. Some of those are already in train. At this rate, it will take 14 years to for the Minister to deliver on Stephen Donnelly's bed plan for our hospitals. Yet, we know that in many hospitals there is overcrowding and that sick patients cannot be admitted quickly enough. On the capital side, we know that the Minister has massively underinvested because she does not have the money to deliver the beds or the maternity hospital or to substantially progress the elective hospitals. There is nothing in this budget to reduce the cost of healthcare. All the big promises relating to Sláintecare and moving to a universal healthcare system have come to a grinding halt because the Minister has not been able to secure additional funding. She talks about efficiency, but I see nothing in this budget about what targets are in place to reduce agency spending and achieve savings and efficiencies. It is all the same bluff and bluster. There are no targets. It is heavy on rhetoric and provides no detail.

What was presented yesterday was a joke in the context of health. Twenty-four hours later, there is still no detail. Shame on the Minister-----

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