ANALYSIS: Suggestions of heavy cuts in the health services just don't stand up, writes Padraig O'Morain, Health and Children Correspondent
The general election campaign threatened to come half-alive yesterday when the Opposition did the best it could with a weekend story suggesting health cutbacks would start to be announced after Friday's vote.
Essentially, the State's 10 health boards overspent on their budgets by €22 million in January and February, despite getting a 15-18 per cent increase for this year. They have now been reminded of all this in the light of their overspend in the first two months.
In an election campaign, the Opposition might be expected to use words like "covert cuts" and "lies" to attack Fianna Fáil in the light of this, and it did.
After all, if the Opposition parties were in Government, precisely the same letter would be going out to the health boards and Fianna Fáil would be throwing around words like "covert" and "lies".
We are a long way away from Doomsday, though, or even from any kind of significant health cuts in the health services.
The overspend at the end of March was approximately €38 million, the Minister for Health said yesterday. At the same time last year, the overspend was higher at €42 million. By the end of the year, that had fallen to €10 million, a deficit carried forward into 2002. That deficit, if repeated, would be very modest indeed in the context of an overall budget of €8 billion.
At health board level, the Southern Health Board says it overspent by €2.8 million in the first quarter of the year. Included in this figure is €860,000 which it is due to get back from the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs for welfare payments which it makes on behalf of the Department. Of the remainder, €1 million was due to the winter vomiting virus. The demand for beds created by the virus meant the Southern Health Board had no income from private beds for about a month; they were filled with patients suffering from the virus and who needed a degree of isolation.
The health board - and, no doubt, other health boards affected by the virus - hope to "talk" to the Department of Health and Children about this €1 million. They have a fighting chance of getting the money back - Mr Martin told The Irish Times yesterday: "We are willing to discuss these issues with all the hospitals because the winter vomiting virus was a once-off."
That leaves a "real" over-run of €1 million for the three months.
In the context of a budget for the year of €860 million, this is hardly catastrophic. Currently, the health board says, it is "not looking at cutbacks" though it agrees that if over-runs worsen by the end of June, it will have to "look at it differently".
The North Eastern Health Board overran its budget by €2.8 million in the first eight weeks of the year. A spokeswoman says its finance committee will meet next Monday to consider what to do about the overrun and will report to the full board the following week.
"We are confident we will deliver on the objectives outlined in the service plan for this year," she says.
The Western Health Board is looking to make 1 per cent in savings in its €648 million budget for the year because of overruns to date. As a board which was badly affected by the winter vomiting virus, which affected hospitals in Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, any relief it can get from the Department of Health and Children will be welcome.
Meanwhile, the board management is talking to the unions under the partnership process to identify savings which would not require service cutbacks.
This, it should be said has been going on for weeks, quite openly and the chief executive officer, Dr Sheelah Ryan has reported budget overruns and the need to either deal with them or make "difficult" decisions at the last two meetings of the Western Health Board.
Not exactly "covert".