Patients within health service will be harmed without further budget overrun – HSE chief

Bernard Gloster confirmed that the HSE would not be sticking with the allocation it received in Budget 2024

HSE CEO Bernard Gloster said an extra €2.4bn to €2.7bn would be required for 2024 but the Department of Health only received an extra €800m in Budget 2024. File picture: Denis Minihane

Patients within the health service will be harmed unless there is a further budget overrun in 2024, HSE chief executive Bernard Gloster has said.

Mr Gloster confirmed that for the upcoming service plan, the HSE would not be sticking with the budgetary allocation provided to it last Tuesday.

The Department of Health received €22.5bn worth of funding to run the health service as part of Budget 2024. Mr Gloster said that he expects the health service deficit for 2023 to be €1.5bn.

He said that the level of funding provided for next year is “not adequate” and that he believed that an extra €2.4bn to €2.7bn would have been required for 2024. However, the Department of Health only received an extra €800m in last Tuesday's budget.

“If the demand was on the health service and me as the CEO to produce a breakeven service plan next year, then we would certainly cause harm. I don’t envisage that we’re going to be doing that,” Mr Gloster said, speaking to RTÉ’s This Week.

“Hence why I have said very publicly and very clearly, I’m not planning to achieve the highest level of deficit possible, I’m working to achieve the lowest level of deficit possible.

But make no mistake about it, our service plan for 2024 that we will put forward to the Minister [for Health] will include a built-in deficit, which is the first time, in my memory of service plans, that would be the case.

Asked if this made the funding allocated to the HSE in the budget “a fiction”, Mr Gloster said: “I think that’s perhaps for other people to decide”.

“We have very significant levels of funding, we have very significant levels of staffing but we do not have enough to do what we’re currently doing today.” 

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Mr Gloster confirmed that there would be a “significant slowdown” in both development and clinical programmes run by the HSE.

However, he confirmed that critical areas like emergency care and scheduled care are “heavily funded” and that improvements would be pursued by the HSE.