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Tánaiste Micheál Martin PA Images

Martin says health spending ‘needs examination and deeper analysis’ amid Budget criticism

It comes as the HSE warned it was short €1.5 billion this year and announced a recruitment freeze.

TÁNAISTE MICHEÁL MARTIN has said funding for Ireland’s health services “needs examination”, amid criticism levelled at the Government over the amount of money given for next year.

The funding allocated to health services next year has prompted criticism of the Government, and has seen a recruitment freeze implemented on some healthcare roles.

Chief executive of the HSE Bernard Gloster told senior management on Friday that he was extending an existing recruitment pause beyond clerical and management grades to include patient and client care roles.

He also announced an immediate pause on around 7,000 posts, previously approved in principle, which can now not be funded.

Representatives of healthcare workers have sharply criticised the freeze as reckless and risky, and opposition politicians have called on the budget for the Department of Health to be re-examined.

Budget 2024, worth a total of €14 billion and unveiled last Tuesday, allocated an extra €800 million to the Department of Health, bringing its total value to €22.5 billion.

The additional €808 million to core funding is to address an ageing population and service pressures, with more than one billion euro in non-core funding allocated to ongoing Covid-19 measures.

Gloster has said that he needs a further €1.5 billion for this year alone.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has said that the majority of this year’s overspend was due to more patients presenting for emergency treatment and inflated prices for medicines.

“We can’t kid ourselves. The additional spending by the HSE forecast for this year at about 1.5 billion euro is largely being driven by the fact they are treating more patients than we have funded them to treat,” the Fianna Fáil TD said.

Asked about the issue today, Martin said that there had been “very significant” investment in health over the past few years.

The Fianna Fáil leader said that €7 billion in additional funding had been allocated to the health service in three years.

He added: “I heard the term recruitment freeze … the issue in the growth for example is that, given the money already allocated, the HSE has not recruited staff even from the existing basis of funding over the last while in critical services, particularly in disability, for example.

“Some of that is due to genuine difficulties in recruiting, the same would have happened in terms of homecare over the last two years where there was challenges because we’ve expanded the services so much in the homecare area.

“So we will work through the funding of health, but the scale of allocation in the last number of years has been very very significant.

“We will work with the HSE but the HSE also will have to work with government, and as I said yesterday, (there) has to be deeper analysis of health spending, parallel with analysis of growing demographics, we’re ageing as a population.

“That has implications, yes, in terms of pressure on health services but funding has dramatically increased.

“€1.8 billion this year, additional increase to health services, and if you look over the last three years I think you’re looking at €7 billion additional to health.”

“So the issue needs examination. Government will continue to work on that with the relevant ministers,” he said while opening the Joe and Helen O’Toole Community Nursing Unit in Tuam, Co Galway.

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    Mute Tricia G ☘️
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    Jun 16th 2022, 11:16 AM

    His SECOND ethics adviser to resign.

    When the first line of your job description is to remind an inveterate liar not to lie, you’re unlikely to be in your position for the very long…..

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    Mute E.J. Murray
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    Jun 16th 2022, 12:29 PM

    Someone resigns, and as usual it isn’t Johnson.

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    Mute Declan Moran
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    Jun 16th 2022, 12:05 PM

    Bojo & ethics, don’t really go hand in hand really :). Bit of an oxymoron

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    Mute Buzz Killington
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    Jun 16th 2022, 1:08 PM

    @Declan Moran: Nah, just a moron.

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    Mute Steve O'Hara-Smith
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    Jun 16th 2022, 2:15 PM

    @Buzz Killington: If only he was, sadly he’s a very clever but odious person.

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    Mute Stephen Deegan
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    Jun 16th 2022, 2:34 PM

    @Steve O’Hara-Smith: A clever but odious mor0n so…

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    Mute Kevin Farrell
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    Jun 16th 2022, 3:04 PM

    @Declan Moran: Or even an Oxford Moron!!!!

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    Mute Niall O'Reilly
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    Jun 16th 2022, 1:51 PM

    Johnson heads up a cabinet of rogues and expects the accolades for holding the highest office of UK government. A government happy to break the law. A government in cahoots with the DUP. A government of shady deals. Without principle. Without honesty. Working to benefit themselves and the tax evasion party they have taken over. When will the working people of England and Wales come to their senses and kick these racketeers out of government?

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    Mute Aaron Tynan
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    Jun 16th 2022, 2:31 PM

    @Niall O’Reilly: the General public in England are deluded. I live here and honestly the rubbish they believe is insane. They think brexit and the tories will bring back mass manufacturing to England and that they will produce all their own goods. All the while the tories are tearing apart what’s left of the manufacturing and slowly privatise the NHS.
    It’s hard to know when working class England will wake up, but I think when they do it will be too late.

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    Mute E.J. Murray
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    Jun 16th 2022, 3:40 PM

    @Aaron Tynan: — The propaganda machine is the only thing that’s working over there, and has been fully operational since before the referendum. Everyone I know over there voted for Brexit, and one of them who works in the NHS voted Brexit because she was convinced that the EU was going to destroy the NHS. I pointed out to her, after she voted, that people in the know had already named the people who were out to destroy the NHS, and that those people were members of the Tory Party, and that the EU had no intention of bringing the NHS to its knees. All in all, they think Johnson’s a great fella altogether, and don’t seem to realise that he despises most of the “converts” who decided to vote Tory after decades of voting Labour.

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