THE Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, announced yesterday that he would be making an extra £1.5 million available for the physically disabled, £1 million for psychiatry and £750,000 for women's health, in his Budget statement to the Dail.
Mr Noonan said the £6 million allocated for the National Cancer Strategy was the first part of a phased implementation plan. This includes reorganising treatment services and devoting resources to screening and early detection.
He said the £12 million allocated to mental handicap services would be used for the provision of residential places, funding for respite services and the provision of day care services.
The £5 million for child care would allow for initiatives to strengthen arrangements for the reporting of child abuse, improvements in the provision of residential care for vulnerable children and an increase in the foster care allowance for children under 12.
However the allocation was described by Mr Owen Keenan, director of Barnardos, as "appallingly inadequate". Its preBudget submission had requested £35 million.
He said that "£5 million won't even meet the increased demands, never mind improve the situation".
Prof James Fennelly, chairman of the Irish Cancer Society, welcomed the £6 million allocation but said it would be "a stretch" to pay for all that was needed to treat cancer in this State.
"It will go very rapidly. Additional staff are needed such as palliative staff, medical oncologists, and radiation oncologists. There needs to be investment in the new regional cancer service," Prof Fennelly said.
Ms Mary Boyd, PRO of the National Association of Mental Handicap of Ireland, said it believed a realistic figure would have been £50 million, not the £12 million given.
"This is supposed to be a boom year and we cannot even get priority funding now. We have 3,000 people on waiting lists and they are all hard cases."
Mr Noonan also referred to the threatened nurses strike and said the strength of feeling expressed by nurses on a range of issues suggested there would be no "quick fix" solution.
At his meeting with the nursing unions on Tuesday neither side was optimistic about the likelihood of averting the strike due to begin on February 10th, given the dimensions and complexity of the issues. "However I will; certainly continue to maintain contacts with the unions to ensure that every possible avenue which might offer a solution is fully explored," said the Minister.
