Simon Harris defends increase in health budget

The Minister for Health Simon Harris has said he fought his corner "pretty well" in Cabinet in securing an additional €600 million in resources for the health service this year.

He said any objective person coming to Ireland, looking at the national budget and seeing the proportion of the increase in spending allocated to the HSE would have to say that the Government had prioritised the health service again.

Mr Harris was responding to revelations that the HSE director general Tony O'Brien had warned of a potential major financial challenge – of up to €880 million – facing the health authority this year.

Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher maintained recent history had shown the HSE was always right and the Department of Health and Department of Public Expenditure was always wrong about shortfalls in funding.

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Mr Kelleher questioned the Minister about a letter he had sent to Mr O’Brien at the end of January criticising “poor budgetary performance” and warning that Government policy must be followed.

Appearing before the Oireachtas committee on health on Wednesday, Mr Harris disagreed with suggestions that there were fraught relations between the Department of Health and the HSE.

Argue the case

He said the HSE had a job to do in advocating for the funding it believed was needed. He said he then, as Minister, would go to the Cabinet table and argue the case and obtain additional resources.

Mr Harris suggested the only mistake he and and the HSE director general had made in relation to the health budget was that they had been too transparent.

He said there was not a State agency in the country that did not look for more money than the Government could provide.

He said, however, perhaps not all agencies wrote letters back and forth which could subsequently be obtained by journalists.

Addressing Mr Kelleher he said: “If anything, the letter you described as extraordinary, I think it is un-extraordinary. The fact that a Government minister would write back to one of his agencies and say we have given you a budget and you have to live within the budget.”

Mr Harris said he wanted to highlight in the letter that the HSE allocation since 2015 had increased by €2.4 billion.

Mr O’Brien said the fundamental reality was that the Government announced a budget and the HSE’s role was then to create a service plan for the Minster to approve.

‘Crunchy conversations’

However, he said from time to time there were “crunchy conversations” where the HSE and Department of Health set out their different perspectives.

"That is heathly.We are not living in North Korea. We can have good discussions," he said.

Meanwhile, Mr O’Brien also said that high rates of influenza would continue for a number of weeks with continuing pressure on hospitals.

He told the Oireachtas committee that a key challenge for most hospitals was the increasing requirement for isolation of patients to ensure that infection control issues were managed appropriately.

“The hospital system does not have sufficient isolation facilities or single rooms and as a result patients can wait for significant periods for suitable accommodation.”