Doctors warn of looming health service funding crisis

Doctors have expressed alarm at a potential health service funding crisis later in the year.

The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) said it warned the Government when the budget was announced last autumn that the amount of money being made available was insufficient to cope with demands on the health service.

The Irish Times reported on Monday that the HSE had advised the Department of Health in a confidential letter a number of weeks ago that if all services in its agreement with the Government for this year were to be delivered there was a risk that it could record a spending overrun of between €300 million and €500 million.

The doctors’ trade union said in a statement that the potential shortfall of up to half a billion euro in funding for the health services “was proof that the health budget had been under resourced for the current year and confirmed the IMO contention at the time that the budget figures were not credible”.

IMO president Dr Ray Walley said the organisation had warned at the time of the budget that the projected spending figure would be insufficient to cope with demands.

“We are looking at a massive shortfall simply because the budget did not provide adequate resources in the first place. The whole budget process for health is farcical and makes this kind of budget crisis inevitable.”

“The proposal by the outgoing Government that they will not countenance a supplementary budget and may curtail spending towards the end of the year would cause a major problem in hospital services in particular and is simply not realistic.

“Treating an overspend this year as a forward payment from next year’s budget is similarly impractical.”

Dr Walley said it was critical that any new programme for Government “would put forward practical, workable solutions to deal with the funding crisis and give certainty to health professionals that they will not be left without funds or resources at the end of the year”.