Healthcare crisis - €70m surplus could fund vital projects

TODAY’S litany of under-spending by Government departments is enough to inflict apoplexy on long-suffering patients in hospital waiting lists or languishing on trollies in those crowded accident and emergency wards.

Given the shambles of Ireland’s health service, most people will find it astonishing that the Department of Health last year returned €70 million to Finance.

That amount was unspent at the end of the year. This despite public clamour for the opening of facilities which the same department has been forced to mothball because of lack of funding. Between them, five departments returned a whopping €325m to Finance. Agriculture surrendered €146m, Education €45m, Enterprise €55m, and Defence €13m.

How many consultants could be recruited to the health service with that kind of money? How many empty hospital wards could be opened with such a whopping sum? How many dilapidated schools could be refurbished? How many special teachers could be employed? How many autistic children could be educated? How many dangerous school buses could be fitted with seat belts?

The list of pertinent questions goes on and on. It is not unusual for such large surpluses to be surrendered. And it is hard to blame officialdom because of the strict criteria which surround this issue.

Basically, under Department of Finance regulations, other departments are required according to public financial procedures to surrender unspent money at the end of each fiscal year. Arguably, however, and particularly when one considers the dire need for crucial funding in so many areas, that surplus money should be fast-tracked into areas where it is desperately wanted. Try telling an irate parent whose children attend vermin-infested, cold and leaking schools that such accountancy rules make sense. A case in point was seen in Carlow yesterday where nurses protested against the appalling conditions intellectually disabled patients are forced to endure.

The first of a series of protests, it was a scathing comment on the rundown and neglected environment in which the nurses and their patients have been waiting for more than 15 years for a promised bungalow complex. In contrast with plush health board offices, the tiles and plaster are falling off walls and ceilings at Kelvin Grove, Carlow’s only adult residential and respite unit for intellectually disabled people. Though it stands on highly valuable building land, the centre is in a state of deterioration. Arguably, that land should be sold off and the money used to improve a facility where windows and doors are becoming loose, bathing and toilet facilities are inadequate and inconsistent with patient needs, the recreation areas overgrown, and day activity areas overlook unkempt yards.

This bleak scenario is another instance of Government failure to invest in the proper care of people with disabilities. There are compelling social and moral reasons why, for instance, unspent money should be diverted to this most deserving cause. It is timely to recall the political document which then Health Minister Micheál Martin prepared for Cabinet just before the last election.

He estimated that €400m worth of hospital facilities and units, which lay idle around the country at the time, could be rapidly commissioned if funding was available.

The latest surplus could go a long way towards achieving that laudable objective. While that might upset accountancy procedures, it could release funding for other projects. It would be in the public interest to devise a system that would allow unspent money to be diverted for emergency purposes.