Health cuts represent 4-5% of total budget, says Boyle

SEANAD REPORT:THE CUTS of €600 million – €1 billion that are likely to have to be made in the health service, while large, represented 4-5 per cent of the overall budget, said deputy Seanad leader Dan Boyle.

He believed cuts of this range would be envisaged across all departments. In the context of a collective acceptance of what needed to be done to secure our future, he believed there was real consensus about whether the HSE was the best body for the delivery of health services. “That is where we need to have a debate that I think might inform where real savings and real improvements in our health services would be made.”

Joe O’Toole (Ind) stressed the need to assure the populace that we could work our way out of our present difficulties, though he did not think we could get back to a 3 per cent deficit figure by 2014. The upcoming budget should be front-loaded. “We need to be able to say that’s the worst budget we’re going to have.”

Eugene Regan (FG) said that given the crisis, “normal opposition politics is not on”. But he did not want the Government to think that this was giving them cover. Whenever the next election came, voters would remember who had brought us to where we were.

Joe O’Reilly (FG) said people must be told the truth. He said top public service salaries must be cut, and there must be an audit of waste in public bodies.

Ivana Bacik (Lab) emphasised the need to provide greater clarity on the true extent of cuts. People were being drip fed news that seemed to be getting progressively worse, and “were being kept, it seemed, in an almost deliberate state of intimidation and fear”.

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The difference between the approaches of Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin to the abuse of Irish passports by Israel and Russia could be characterised by mendacity, double standards and hypocrisy, Eoghan Harris (Ind) said.

The Minister made a song and dance about the Israeli involvement, but he had been mute about similar activities by the Russians. One could understand the Israelis viewing the disparity with some cynicism.