HSE regions 'cannot do everything every year'

Health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill was speaking at a budget briefing on Wednesday morning

Health minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: 'It’s not the historic way of allocating an amount of money to an illness. It’s different.' File picture

Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has warned the HSE regions they "cannot do everything every year" and overspending this year will reduce the funding available for services next year.

There is growing concern at overspending in the HSE, as the Government allocated a record €29.1bn to health spending in Budget 2027 on Tuesday.

"This is a test for management of the different regions," Ms Carroll MacNeill said at a budget briefing on Wednesday morning.

"You are given a budget by the taxpayers, the patients of Ireland, to recruit in strategic ways. You cannot do everything every year. You have to make choices and prioritise."

Ms Carroll MacNeill pointed to the HSE Dublin and North East region as an example of how services could be expanded "while not breaching their pay budget by more than 2%".

She said other regions had not taken that "strategic approach” and three “have very clearly eaten into next year’s provision". 

Ms Carroll MacNeill made a distinction between staffing and medicine spending overruns, describing the latter as “an expensive success story”.

The 10-year national maternity strategy and national cancer strategy are both due to expire this year, but Ms Carroll MacNeill said she did not yet have an overall funding allocation for their successors.

She said the health service was increasingly organised on a regional basis, "so it’s not the historic way of allocating an amount of money to an illness. It’s different."

Minister of state for mental health Mary Butler said: "It’s not acceptable to me that ringfenced posts for mental health funded in the budgets ’26 and ’27 would be delayed or suppressed by overspends elsewhere in the health budget." 

Mental health spending is “just about €5m under budget actually”, she said.

This year’s budget includes funding for 40 consultants in children’s mental health services, along with other new roles. “We will be holding these centrally and only distributing these to the regions once the posts are actually hired,” said Ms Butler.

Minister of state for older people Kieran O'Donnell said record funding for older people's services would support areas including dementia care, meals on wheels, and family carer programmes.

The health budget also includes additional funding for public health initiatives and the national drugs strategy.