Results 37,101-37,120 of 49,836 for speaker:Stephen Donnelly

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Deputy. It is a really good question and one I have asked. I wrote to the HSE quite some time ago to say almost exactly what the Deputy has said. Given the vast amount of money that is being spent, much of it outside the normal checks and balances that are in place for procurement, I asked whether the HSE could do an audit of it and come back to us. It has given an undertaking...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: That is a great question. It is certainly happening on PPE, which would be one of the biggest amounts. For example, in the amount we are looking at here, €667 million is for PPE alone. It is a vast amount of money. Testing and tracing, obviously, involved a huge amount of money as well.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: I think it is.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: I agree that they add to the base. We have done it quite differently this year. Last year, the winter plan cost €30 million. This year, it is €600 million. We are doing things at a completely different scale. In fairness, what we designed with the HSE was a winter plan. So far, it is working. The trolley numbers are at 30% of what they were last year but presentations are...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: Budget 2021 includes provision for that and it actually states that our capacity has gone up and we are continuing it with the rest of the budget. This is one of the reasons that the budget was so high. I felt it quite right to point at the Government budgets but as I said at the start, if the Deputy has not already done this I suggest she look at the ESRI report on comparative healthcare...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: Yes, it would, absolutely.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: I will get the Deputy a breakdown of that. I can tell him that of that amount, €208 million of it was for the China Resources Pharmaceuticals deal and there was money spent with Irish providers, EU providers and further afield.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: If we assume that demand and supply were broadly matched in that the HSE got what people were ultimately looking for, this will not be perfect but when things calm down I will get the Deputy a schedule of exactly what was bought. If we assume that that broadly matches supply, then it will answer the question around what was needed.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: More than that, I formally requested one from the HSE and it has agreed to this. The HSE will come back to me with an audit on that in the first quarter of next year.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: With the benefit of hindsight, I do not think that any of us would have done it the way it was done. Together with the Deputy, I was highly critical of the deal at the time and sought for it to be ended early. I did not think it was the best way to proceed and am firmly and repeatedly on the record to that end. Even at the time, however, I was saying that it was easy for me to say that and...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: My understanding is that there was not any work done on Covid-19. The Covid-19 patients were all brought into the public hospitals and the private hospitals were to try to keep the urgent non-Covid-19 public work going. I may be slightly wrong here but, for example, my understanding is that the public St. Vincent’s University Hospital took over St. Vincent’s Private...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: My understanding is that there was a provision made for potentially extending that contract for longer. It was decided, quite rightly, to end the contract.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: We did not need the capacity and it was the wrong deal.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: It was, but although I am repeating myself, let us just remember the state of fear and anxiety in the country at the time. Our doctors and the Army were setting up tents in car parks of public hospitals. That is where we were at. I agree, I do not think it will be done like that in the future and it is certainly not how we are thinking about doing it if it is needed again, and please God it...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: We do. I wish to apologise because I know that the Deputy was one of the signatories to that Private Members' motion. I received it last Friday and worked on a response to it in the Department over the weekend and I talked to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, about exactly what we could put in place. I put in a lot of work but, unfortunately, I could not attend. I wanted...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: That is all fair. I do not think the HSE would do the same again if put in the same situation. It is obviously easy for all of us to talk about it now. Could or should what the Chairman has just said have happened? Could people have stepped in and said that we need to get the utilisation rates up? Along with the Chairman and Deputy Kenny, I was advocating for exactly that. At the start,...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: I will go through the various questions and the Deputy is free to tell me to stop whenever he wants. The overall question is linked to the community healthcare question of whether Sláintecare is for real. For me, Sláintecare is a roadmap to universal healthcare and having high-quality care when people need it. I am taking this matter deadly seriously and I hope the Deputy can see...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: When the problem is that one cannot get to the consultant for an assessment, the NTPF is of no use.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: To date, part of the fix has been for people to travel by bus to one private hospital in Northern Ireland, which is covered by the cross-border directive. That is not right and not what we should be doing. As part of the access to care thinking for next year, which is the pot of €340 million, these are exactly the kinds of issues that I want to examine. It is a great example.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2020
Vote 38 - Department of Health (Supplementary) (2 Dec 2020)

Stephen Donnelly: In fairness to the HSE, the solution to the question is in a task force that has not done the work yet so the HSE was in no position to do anything. The issue required a policy response and we will work with the HSE on exactly that. In terms of training for GPs, absolutely. Really, it is a conversation that the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science,...