The Tánaiste yesterday conceded that the Government would have to spend more on healthcare, but she insisted that any increased spending would have to be accompanied by reform of the system to ensure value for money, writes Barry Roche, Southern Correspondent.
Ms Harney said the Government had increased its healthcare spend threefold since 1996 to its current level of €11 billion, but she stressed that choices would have to be made and priorities placed on any future spending.
"I think we've got to put in reforms so that we're getting better value for money and the money is going into frontline services. It is not acceptable, for example, that people are otrolleys in A&E facilities in acute hospitals. It's not acceptable that we have insufficient stepdown facilities for the elderly," she said.
"I think a number of initiatives needs to be put in place very quickly, and that's why the reform is more important than the money in the short term because if we don't accompany new investment with reform, we're not going to achieve the potential that that money can deliver."
Ms Harney made her comments after reports that the Department of Health had reached agreement with the Department of Finance on a €2.5 billion investment in healthcare. But the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, said yesterday that the money was part of the Government's five-year capital programme for health. He dismissed suggestions that it was a once-off supplementary allocation.
Meanwhile, Ms Harney said it made no sense to have new hospital facilities lying idle because there were no funds to open them. The solution was not simply to spend money but to make choices and allocate funds to priority areas.
She cited the example of her own Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment where spending had increased by just 3 per cent last year. Given the benchmarking agreement, this amounted to a negative spend, and yet she was able to increase spending in science by 35 per cent, simply by prioritising.
Ms Harney said there would be no change in Government policy despite the increase and pointed to the terms of agreements with the social partners which commit the Government to not increasing public spending beyond increases in GNP.
"It's about making choices where we want to put the money. It's not about going crazy on public spending. That was the madness that nearly drove the economy under in the mid 1980s.
"We have to have prudent management of public finances. I don't believe there will be any change in the economic policies that we've had over the last number of years," she said.
"The last thing this Government needs and the last thing this country needs is to go on a spending spree which will result in a tax or borrowing strategy which will drive this economy under.
"That is not something that is sustainable. It is not something I could support and not something, I believe, that anyone in the Government wants to see happen," the Tánaiste said.