Seanad debates

Tuesday, 10 October 2017

3:30 pm

Photo of Colm BurkeColm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

One of our colleagues, who is in Fianna Fáil, is a GP from Mayo and he has a lot of experience in GP care in rural area. It is unfortunate that we were all excluded.

When considering health care it is important to consider cost efficiencies. One of the big complaints I have heard in the past 12 months has been how we employed an extra 2,000 in the HSE to work in management and administration. At least now the Minister for Finance has taken hold of the matter. He has called for 1,800 extra people to be recruited to work in front-line services. People have talked about the front line. They have called for more health services to be delivered in health care. We need more health services but we need to have the staff to deliver them. We need the doctors and the nurses.

Sinn Féin continuously highlights that services need to be developed yet it called for increased taxation to be imposed on higher income earners. Sinn Féin does not realise that to attract doctors back to this country there must be an attractive salary and a taxation system that does not discourage them from working here. That is where we need to strike a balance. If we want to keep people here we must compete for medical staff on the world market and it is not simply Cork versus Dublin or Dublin versus Galway. We must keep that goal in mind and that is why it is important that we make sure to reward people for their work. That is why we need to bring about the necessary reduction in the levels of taxation that people are paying, particularly middle income groups. Junior doctors, nurses and care assistants are all very important if we want to develop a health service. This is a good and balanced budget but we have much more work to do if we want to attract back to this country the people we require to deliver the services in health care. Many people are on waiting Iists, so we need people to work in the sector. We do not have them at the moment and we have much work to do to attract them.

Again, I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House to take this debate. I wish him well in his term as Minister of State in the Department of Finance.

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