An additional 1,000 nurses will be recruited using significantly increased funding for the health service, Minister for Health Simon Harris has promised.
In addition, the €2.50 prescription charge is being reduced to €2 and the maximum monthly cap is being cut from €25 to €20 for over-70s.This will require legislation.
The Department of Health’s budget will increase next year to €14.2 billion or current expenditure plus €454 million for capital, an increase of €977 million on the 2016 budget.
However, half of this sum was announced earlier this year, so the additional funding in the budget amounts to €497 million. Mr Harris claimed that this year’s budget is the largest ever in health.
Asked how he planned to recruit the extra nurses required, Mr Harris referred to the setting up of a public service pay commission and said an initiative on graduate nurses would be unveiled later this week.
He acknowledged that reducing the prescription charge hadn’t been an immediate priority until Independent Alliance ministers negotiated extra funding and made it possible.
Medical cards are being provided to 10,000 children who are in receipt of the domiciliary care allowance, as promised in the programme for government. This will be introduced early in 2017.
Additional funding of €15 million will be provided to the National Treatment Purchase Fund next year to tackle long waiting lists. The amount will rise to €50 million in 2018.
The allocation includes €5 million for a “healthy Ireland” fund, €40 million in funding for disabilities, and €35 million for mental health funding.This ringfenced mental health funding was never fully used in previous years.
Extra money is also being provided for the national maternity strategy, the National Ambulance Service and cancer programmes.
Free GP a priority
Mr Harris said the expansion of free GP care to all children remained a Government priority, but that first “we need to bring GPs with us” in contract negotiation. As well, there had to be an adequate supply of doctors .
Fianna Fáil welcomed the reactivation of the NTPF to tackle long waits and predicted it would take thousands off the lists. The party created the NTPF for this purpose but it was mothballed by the last Government.
In 2010, the last full year of the fund’s existence, 33,000 public patients were treated and the average waiting time for elective treatment was under three months, Fianna Fail health spokesman Billy Kelleher said.
However, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association described the NTPF funding as “at best a stop-gap measure”.
The association’s president, Tom Ryan, said it failed to address the cause of long waiting lists, which were inadequate bed capacity and insufficient operating capacity.
