Health will get an extra €7bn a year, vows Harney

HEALTH services will have an extra €7 billion a year in resources within five years if the economy continues to thrive, Health Minister Mary Harney vowed last night.

Ms Harney predicted the health budget could be a massive €20bn a year by 2012. However, she stressed the extra spending is contingent on reform of the health services.

The current budget is a historically high €13bn but services have been beset by a serious A&E crisis involving hundreds of people left on trolleys in corridors for days. It forced the Tanáiste to describe the situation as a “national emergency”.

Opening the PDs’ national conference in Limerick last night, Ms Harney used the prospect of a huge health budget to argue resources will not be a problem. She promised enough money to provide:

* More hospital beds.

* A doubling of the number of hospital consultants under a new contract.

* A new children’s hospital.

* More primary care centres.

* More services for people with disabilities and older people.

“If we continue the sound management of the economy, we will probably have about €7bn more available for health by 2012. Public health spending would be €20bn by then. And private health spending will also be higher,” she said.

However, Ms Harney firmly linked this with fundamental reform of the health services.

“I do not believe that all we need is big new spending plans grafted on to the present system. We won’t get the results we want. Taxpayers’ money would be wasted.”

She identified as her priorities faster services in A&E, better GP cover out of hours, more efficient use of hospital beds, more fairness for public patients in public hospitals, and more care in the community for older people.

Ms Harney devoted a large part of her speech to a defence of her plan to locate private hospital facilities on the grounds of public hospitals, a policy that attracted criticism at the Irish Medical Organisation conference in Killarney yesterday.

She strongly denied that it was privatisation, contending that the involvement of the private sector would result in the freeing up of an extra 1,000 beds for public patients in public hospitals.

“The running cost of private beds in public hospitals is subsidised by the State by about 40%. Some of the income received for private treatment goes to hospitals. The rest goes to consultants in private fees. Effectively, we have been running State-funded hospitals like airplanes with business class; and with the pilots getting a special fee for each business class customer, whether or not they sit in a business class seat,” she said.