Concerns over how 10-year Sláintecare plan will be paid for
The Government’s high-profile 10-year plan to reform the health service has been criticised for failing to provide a clear price tag on how much it will cost over the next decade.
Health Minister Simon Harris was forced to defend the project yesterday amid fears the multi-billion-euro changes will fail unless exact details are immediately put forward on how much it will cost and where the money will come from.
As part of plans put forward in response to the Sláintecare report published by the Dáil’s committee on the future of healthcare 15 months ago, the Government yesterday recommitted to a series of vital health service reforms.
The 106 changes include:
Speaking at the launch of the plan, Mr Harris said the changes are the “light at the end of the tunnel” that patients have been waiting for, after being forced to accept lengthy delays to treatment and inadequate care have been waiting for.
He was repeatedly questioned over where the money will come from to pay for the likely €6bn worth of changes.
He said new taxes will not be needed but failed to outline how funding will be made available.
The Minister for Health, Simon Harris today published the Slaintecare Implementation Strategy at Government Buildings. #Slaintecare pic.twitter.com/Kgmw3wSnVY
— MerrionStreet.ie (@merrionstreet) August 8, 2018
Mr Harris said: “There is one crucial reason I am not putting a global figure out here today and saying, ‘This is the Sláintecare figure, come and get your slice of it in contract negotiations’.
“This will require significant contractual negotiation with many stakeholders in the health service.
“It will, in some instances, require procurement and tendering and out of a duty of care for the taxpayer, there is obviously a process to go through there,” Mr Harris said yesterday when asked how much the plan will cost.”
Róisín Shortall, a Social Democrats TD and chairwoman of the committee on the future of healthcare
chair Roisin Shortall last night, said last night that while the plans are welcome, there is a need for clarity on how it will be funded and that the Government’s commitment to the reforms must be made clear in the upcoming budget.
Mr Harris confirmed taxpayers may have to pay hospital consultants lucrative financial compensation to make them limit their work to public patients only as part of the high-profile 10-year health service reform plan.
Among the knock-on effects of the planned changes will be the need to draw up new contracts for highly paid hospital consultants who currently work for both the public and private sectors.
“Slaintecare Implementation Strategy..sets out four over-arching goals and ten high-level strategic actions which will be the key focus for the first three years.” #Slaintecare pic.twitter.com/wPqru7lmKW
— MerrionStreet.ie (@merrionstreet) August 8, 2018
Asked if this will mean hospital consultants will need to be financially “compensated” for any changes to their contracts, as outlined in correspondence from the HSE to the Department in recent days, Mr Harris admitted some payouts will be needed.
“In my view, it [compensation] is the wrong word. But is it true to say that if we wanted to disentangle private practice from public hospitals it would require contract negotiations from consultants? Yes, it would. Are we making those decisions today? No, we are not.”
