Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
HEALTH MINISTER LEO Varadkar has been granted a supplementary health budget for 2014 of €680 million — almost €200 more than the figure he had been lobbying for.
Varadkar had been asking for €500 million to fill the hole in his his annual budget.
It’s typical for supplementary budgets for Health to be announced towards the end of the year, and Varadkar said the funding would help account for “increased levels of medical activity, drugs and therapies, medical appliances, the cost of State claims, and frontline staff”.
Of the total supplementary payment, €510m is going on the HSE deficit, while €54 million is required for payments by the HSE to the State Claims Agency.
Additionally, €5 million is being allocated towards drug programmes for high-risk Hepatitis C patients, and €3 million is going towards a new ‘delayed discharge’ scheme for patients.
“The timing of income collection and working capital requirements associated with prior years contributes a further €108 million cash requirement in 2014,” the Department said in a statement.
Fianna Fáil health spokesperson Billy Kelliher said the payment was “the direct result of the fundamentally flawed 2014 health budget”.
“The fallout from last year’s bogus budget has resulted in exorbitant waiting lists, increases in the number of patients on trolleys and long delays across a range of services,” Kelleher said — calling on the Minister to explain what impact the overrun would have on the health budget in 2015.
“The impact of these ill-thought out funding allocations are leading to diminished services across the health sector and will compound the pressure on already stretched resources,” Kelleher added.
Varadkar said the large supplementary budget “allows us to bring forward some spending from 2015 into December of this year”.
“It will have no impact whatsoever on the budget for the Department of Health for next year and the HSE Service Plan announced last week is unaffected and the figures remain unchanged.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
My wife’s granny, from South Poland came to visit us in Wexford in 2010. She was 80 at the time. She’d never seen a beach; sand or the ocean. She stripped to her underwear and dived in! It was wonderful, I shed a few tears that day.
I’d cry to if I saw a granny in her underwear!
Yeah, cyclops tears
Hahahahahahahaha
Great story. The things we take for granted living on a small Island then you hear a story like this. In her century of life to have never seen the sea or the beach in person.
Mick, she spent her life working on farms and raising children, let’s face it they either hated her ( cause it’s only 400 mile round trip) or she’s a free loader
Brian have you ever seen rural America. There are places there in that time forgot. At 100 she was a teenager in the Great Depression. And rural Tennessee during those years wouldn’t have altered much since the civil war. She would have started having kids in the 30′s and 40′s. And as we don’t know about her financial circumstances during all those years or anything about her children. So its a very large leap to assume that they either hated her or that she is a freeloader as you put it.
You learn something new every day!
Yeh that your a dope. She new the ocean existed she just never saw it in real
Lovely grammar
Irony overload !!!!!
Good input Brendan. Are you drunk ?
Not drunk, just stoooopid
Stay classy Brendan
Hah… so ironic.
Thats lovely to sea!!
My father told me a story of having relatives from Northern Ireland, they had lived their entire lives in their own village, never leaving it. Of course they never saw the sea. He brought them to Bettystown in Co. Meath but when they got one look at the incoming tide they were so terrified he had to leave. They thought it was some sort of biblical tidal wave and would kill everyone. They couldn’t wait to get back to their wee village, where they felt safe.
Were they Hobbits?
I once met an aul man in Dublin was said he has never been outside of Dublin City.
God bless her
Could not afford a 400 mile trip. What a load of bull. Not bothered more like it.
Seeing the ocean doesn’t make you live longer or make you happier. Maybe the secret to a long life is being contented with your lot !
Old story read about it on the Daily mail yesterday http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2843073/100-year-old-woman-sees-ocean-1st-time.html#comments – At least they put a but of effort into the report,
instead of just 4-5 small sentences.
Does anybody actually read the Daily Mail. I thought it was a picture paper.
Ah sure everyone was Bashing the Indo last week because they “photoshopped” the guy throwing a brick in a protest – turned out it was a good report because everyone talked about it.
Pinel G,
How did the daily mail try and blame Obama for it?
Right wing rag.
4-5 sentences and a YOUTUBE VIDEO!!!
It’s amazing what we take for granted. I had a Slovak student who never seen the beach and sea . I took her one day and she just sat there and sooo amazed that when she asked me what was sea weed and could not understand all the sand surrounding us I could see people close to us watching and thinking where did she come from .
I had a Spanish student that asked me can we see the stars here , he sat outside one night and tried to photograph them , he said he never seen them before he was aged 13 and came from Madrid and said due to the pollution in air they can’t see stars .
I had a Uganda girl and like that she never seen a boat in water . To bring these simple things we take for granted to people who never saw them it’s amazing to see their reaction and to tell us how lucky we are to have them close by or to see them x
have your say