Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. It is clear that since the launch of Project Ireland 2040, the socioeconomic environment that underpinned that plan has changed drastically. I want to speak about multi-annual plans. The proposed level of capital expenditure is inadequate to deal with the challenges we face in healthcare. The HSE capital plan for 2023 is inadequate. It lacks the urgency and ambition that are necessary to turn the health service around. Instead of bringing about much-needed reform, this plan guarantees a glacial pace of progress which has failed the staff of hospitals and patients to date.

We, therefore, call on the Minister to outline a multi-annual approach to capacity expansion. This would be vital to support the quicker delivery of projects and the development of the pipeline of capacity. The capital plan should at the very least set out how the HSE will address the deficit in beds and requirements in future years.

The massive cost overruns in key projects, such as the national children's hospital and others, have impacted the public’s confidence in our ability to turn the health service around. Even more worryingly, they have impacted the delivery and commencement of much-needed projects. The longer the HSE is without a proper multi-annual capacity plan, the worse the crisis in our hospitals will get. It is the ordinary people who are left to wait on trolleys and who will suffer. A change in approach is therefore desperately needed.

I want to speak briefly about sexual health. If the Minister ever has a chance if he is in London, he might visit 56 Dean Street. It is a purpose-built sexual health clinic in Soho in London, which has obviously been central to the LGBT community over the years. We have a situation where HIV and STI rates are rising. Sexual health services obviously closed during the pandemic. Multiple factors are responsible for the rising rates, including people transferring to Ireland and transferring their healthcare here. However, we need to have a new sexual health strategy as soon as possible. There are huge waiting lists for PrEP, which we campaigned for, and was long fought for.

In terms of capital infrastructure, 56 Dean Street is a state-of-the-art, purpose-built sexual health clinic. It is a great example. The staff and services in the GUIDE clinic in St. James’s Hospital, the Gay Men’s Health Service, GMHS, which is now on Heytesbury Street, and the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital do incredible work.However, I think that our capital infrastructure, when it comes to sexual health, needs investment. Regarding the prefabs for the GMHS, we can do better for our sexual health services. Home testing for sexually transmitted infections, STIs and HIV has obviously been a game-changer as well, and I commend the Government and Sláintecare on that work. If the Minister is ever in London, he would do very well and it would be a good experience for him to visit and meet the folks at 56 Dean Street.