Joan Burton rejects assertion that HSE service plan unsustainable

Tánaiste Joan Burton rejected an assertion in the Dáil the Health Service Executive service plan was unsustainable.

“I want to make it very clear that I do not agree because for both this year and next year the Minister for Health has actually received a very significant increase in resources,’’ she said.

Ms Burton was replying to Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher.

Mr Kelleher said HSE director general Tony O’Brien had said the spending budget of just over €13 billion would not be sufficient to fully address the increasing demand being placed on the hospital system.

This would be particularly so in the growing waiting lists for elective surgery, he said.

“We have been here before, in terms of having no confidence in how the Government has formulated health budgets over the past three years, and we have been proven right on every occasion,’’ he said.

“Again, we have a concern that the budget is being built on sand, in that it does not have sufficient funding in place to ensure the basic levels of service required in our public health system.’’

Mr Kelleher said in October 7,000 people were on trolleys and 377 people were waiting on trolleys on Wednesday.

More than 2,000 beds were closed, 56,000 people were on waiting lists for inpatient care and 370,000 people were waiting for outpatient appointments, he said.

Ms Burton said according to the HSE’s most recently published data, the total number of patients on inpatient and day care waiting lists to the end of September was 56,902.

This was an increase of approximately 3,400, or 6.5 per cent, in August, she said.

Of these, Ms Burton said, almost 10,000 adults had exceeded the target waiting time of eight months for a procedure and 1,930 children had exceeded the target paediatric waiting time of 20 weeks for a procedure.

“A total of four out of five people receive treatment within the target time,’’ the Tánaiste said.

“The Minister has committed to addressing the issue of improving the targets in the context of the significant additional resources available.’’