Minister for Health Simon Harris has forecast that the number of people on waiting lists for in-patient treatment or day procedures will fall this year.
He said there would be "massive investment" this year in tackling hospital waiting lists, adding that the budget for the National Treatment Purchase Fund would increase to €55 million.
He said this would allow for an additional 5,000 cataract operations to be carried out. He maintained that 70 per cent of people requiring cataract operations would receive their surgery within nine months.
Mr Harris said there were fewer people on hospital waiting lists for in-patient and day case treatment in January this year as compared with January 2017 -- 80,000 as against 82,000 -- and he forecast that the numbers on waiting lists would continue to fall.
The Minister also said he believes a deal can be reached this year with general practitioners on the provision of new servies under a revised contract and on reversing cuts imposed following the financial crash.
Speaking at the opening of a new primary care facility in Coolock in north Dublin, the Minister said that both he and the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar fully understood that GPs wanted to do more work in the community but needed additional resources to allow this to done.
‘Fair point’
He said GPs had a “fair point” when they argued that they could not take on additional work as part of a shift from a hospital-centred care model to a primary care model until the cuts imposed under financial emergency legislation - known as Fempi - were addressed.
He said there was a need for the Government to sit down with GPs “and see how we can move beyond Fempi”.
The Minster said chronic disease management and diabetes could be managed in the community and that this could prevent people from having to go to hospital for their care.
GP organisations have complained that talks on a revised contract have been underway for about a year but without real progress being made.
Mr Harris said the existing GP contract with the State dated back decades and there was a “huge volume of work to talk about what they can provide, about what State needs them to provide and how that interacts with the Slaintecare (health reform ) report.
The Minster said the talks with GPs were “moving onto the serious point and talking about resources”.
“I do believe in 2018 we can reach agreement on how to move forward on fempi and on new services.”
