Consultants criticise lack of commitment to open more hospital beds in HSE plan

The organisation representing hospital consultants has criticised the Health Service Executive (HSE) for failing to lay out commitments for how many new hospital beds it plans to open this year.

Earlier this week the HSE published its national service plan for 2024, which said the cost of the health service would exceed available funding over the next 12 months.

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA), the national body representing hospital consultants, said it was “deeply disappointing” that the plan did not set out a commitment to open a specific number of general hospital beds.

The group said pledges from Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly to open an extra 147 acute beds this year were not detailed in the HSE plan. The association said even this number of new beds would be “significantly below” the capacity required across the hospital system to address “severe overcrowding” and high waiting times.

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“While any increase in health funding is welcome, the fact that an almost €1 billion supplementary budget was required for 2023 outside of the original budget allocation illustrates that the health service continues to be inadequately funded,” the IHCA said.

The group said a similar shortfall would likely require another “substantial” supplementary budget to address the funding gap this year.

A spokeswoman for the association said it was “deeply disappointing” that the HSE’s service plan did not commit to opening a specific number of general hospital beds.

“It is also regrettable that the HSE and Government continues to renege on its pledge to commit the €1 billion in funding required to open 1,500 additional rapid build hospital beds across 15 acute public hospital sites this year,” she said.

The consultants association said the HSE plan would only deliver a “modest increase” in funding for mental health services. “This is the second year in a row when the level of funding for new measures has actually decreased compared with the previous year: from €24m in 2022 to €14m in 2023 and to just €3.1m in 2024 – a reduction of almost €21m or 87% in two years,” the statement said.

The Government allocated a record €23.5 billion to the HSE for this year in Budget 2024, an increase of some 4.6 per cent on last year’s budget. Some of this funding has been set aside by the HSE to restructure the organisation at national level, by setting up of six new HSE health regions.

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