SF calls for radical change in healthcare strategy

A service free at the point of delivery and the establishment of a single waiting list are key elements of Sinn Fein's health strategy, published yesterday.

The document proposes a ten-point plan of action, including an increase in healthcare funding to the EU average of 8 per cent of GDP, the ending of the "two-tier" system, and the harnessing of resources north and south into a "dynamic, island-wide" whole.

Introducing the plan, Sinn Féin TD Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said there was a particular need to address the "inordinate control" consultants had in deciding how healthcare should be provided, decisions that he claimed were geared to the interests of the consultants themselves.

Mr Ó Caoláin cited the example of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which he said determined the birthrate necessary for the maintenance of maternity units, regardless of local circumstances.

In his own area, the north-east, two units had closed in the past year. The result was that women were travelling unfeasibly long distances for maternity services, and there was an increase in the number of women in labour being unable to get to a hospital in time.

The Sinn Féin document also criticises the situation in which, according to a report commissioned by the Government, the private sector contributes only 11 per cent of public hospital running costs, while taking up 20 per cent of beds.

It adds that the policy of establishing a purchase fund to get public patients treated in private hospitals, while offering short-terms cuts in waiting times, will perpetuate inequity, while also creating "the bizarre scenario of the private health service profiting from the Government's policy failures". It was a "scandal" that we had "first-class and second-class patients", he said.