Varadkar rules out constituency deals with TDs on health issues

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has ruled out making individual constituency deals with TDs for the provision of health services.

“I would not be prepared to go back to a situation whereby the decision on where we locate specialist regional and national centres is made based on political deals,” he said.

“I think that would be wrong and I would not like to see us go back to that in any circumstances.”

Mr Varadkar said there was a national clinical programme which decided where specialist services should be located. It should not be based on lobbying or political speeches “and certainly no political deals”, he added.

The Minister was replying to a Dáil debate on the health services as the negotiations for a Fine Gael-led minority government continued elsewhere.

He said the funding for mental health had been a matter of public commentary in recent days. The mental-health budget, he added, was €791.6 million for this year, which was an increase of 4.4 per cent.

He said €35 million would be provided for in the base budget for next year and the key task was to ensure there was best value from this. He said there had been “time- related savings” because it had not been possible to fill all new posts from January 1st.

As had been outlined in the Health Service Executive service plan, it had been decided savings would be utilised elsewhere in the community, he added. He said “claims of some sort of raid” on funds were entirely inaccurate.

Suicide rate

Independent TD

Mick Wallace

said mental health was the health issue raised most during the election campaign in his constituency.

"Problems with mental health are not confined to Wexford but the county did have the highest suicide rate in Ireland in 2015," he added.

“That is not unrelated to the fact that Wexford has the third-highest level of deprivation in the country or that the HSE deals abysmally badly with the problem there.”

Mr Wallace said a person feeling suicidal, or somebody who had any form of mental illness in Wexford after 5pm or at the weekend, had serious problems trying to get help.

"The person will eventually end up at an accident and emergency department in Waterford, where he or she might get a referral and get some professional help or a space in the unit there," he added.

Sinn Féin TD Imelda Munster said there had been 554 deaths by suicide last year.

She added: “At what stage will the Government stop looking the other way? This is bigger than party politics.”

Fine Gael TD Hildegarde Naughton said health reform had been stymied by vested interests, medical, political and others, since the time of Dr Noel Browne. If the debate were to result in members of the House merely leaving down their political cudgels, it would be something to show the people the House was serious about fixing the health system and not playing politics with the issue, she added.