THE GOVERNMENT has missed almost half its own targets for improving the health services, Fine Gael deputy leader Richard Bruton claimed yesterday.
Mr Bruton, also his party’s finance spokesman, insisted that the shortfall had come about in spite of an extra €1.8 billion being invested in the system.
He claimed that a “top 10” of failures existed in relation to these targets.
These include promises to deliver 800 respite care beds for older patients, create 100 extra primary-car teams and deliver 100,000 extra out-of-hours service from GPs.
“At the end of 2006, the Department of Health was given €1.8 billion extra to finance improved services in 2007,” he said.
“In the spring of 2007 the department published 49 output targets which it was supposed to deliver by the end of the year.
“But the department’s recently published annual statement reveals that 22 (45 per cent) of these targets were not met,” Mr Bruton said.
He criticised the Government’s “crazy method” of budgeting and performance evaluation. He claimed it failed to analyse the resource requirement of objectives that were being set.
“Targets set from year to year are divorced from the underlying strategies that are supposed to be driving them.
“Targets are missed with no consequences for anyone,” he said.
He was also highly critical of the decision by the Department of Finance five years ago to exempt the Department of Health from the evaluation of its programmes on the basis that its primary focus was in reforming itself.