People would be amazed at the number of those involved in policymaking who do not understand things like percentages, former taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.
He said while some like Paschal Donohoe and Jack Chambers – the Ministers for Public Expenditure and the Minister for Finance – understand numbers, “quite a lot don’t”.
He said generally speaking those who did well in professions such as politics and journalism did so because they were good at language and English and not at numbers and maths.
Delivering the Irish Medical Organisation’s (IMO) annual Doolin memorial lecture in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland on Saturday, Mr Varadkar said: “I remember having a conversation with a former Cabinet member, who will remain nameless, and trying to explain house prices and the fact that if house prices fell by 50 per cent and then recovered by 100 per cent they actually were back to where they were at the start.
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“And blank face and blank stare – could not understand this for a second. And then of course percentages, medians and means are not well understood by a lot of people in the media system and the political system, which is a big worry, quite frankly.”
Mr Varadkar urged doctors not to “sell themselves short” in pay negotiations with the government. “Doctors in Ireland are well paid but everyone in Ireland is actually well paid relative to other countries. Doctors in Ireland roughly earn three times the average income and that is not out of kilter with the rest of the developed world.”
Mr Varadkar told members of the IMO: “As you enter into pay negotiations in the future, and people from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform say doctors in Ireland are among the best paid in the world, you can tell them civil servants are among the best paid in the world. It is a feature of Ireland that we are high paid and [have] a high cost of living.
“There is no reason why you can’t defend your income and look for more in the years ahead, certainly in line with growth in wages in the private sector which is running at 4 per cent to 7 per cent per year. Don’t sell yourself short, would be my advice.”
Mr Varadkar said pay for nurses did not compare well internationally. He said nurses’ pay at around €45,000 to €50,000 was not particularly high given that they had a four-year science degree and many had additional qualifications on top of this.
He suggested the controversial new €2 billion national children’s hospital could be seen as a 10-year development project – running from 2016 when it secured planning permission to its projected commissioning in 2026. He indicated that an expenditure on average of €220 million year would represent about 20 per cent of the health service capital budget.
The former taoiseach said he was worried that the pipeline of new hospital development projects being planned was not sufficiently strong. He suggested that in Galway a new €1 billion hospital was needed, with significant investment also required in Limerick and elsewhere.
He said the planned new National Maternity Hospital project – to replace the existing facility in Holles Street – was “crawling along” and had not yet gone to tender for construction.
The Department of Health subsequently contacted The Irish Times in response to Mr Varadkar’s comments to say the tender for the main works contractor for the development and relocation of the new National Maternity Hospital was issued earlier this year.
Mr Varadkar said he hoped the new programme for government would include a commitment to open about 5,000 additional hospital beds, which was the level of investment he said was required. He forecast that the population in Ireland would reach six million by 2040 or so.
He said at the heart of a lot of the problems in the Irish health system was that there were too few hospital beds.
“We have done a terrible thing in policy terms – a lot done with advice from medics and specialists – by reducing hospital beds by far too much, and making the emergency department the only way through which most patients can get into the hospital. That is a fundamental thing that has not been resolved yet.”
Mr Varadkar said in his defence as a former minister for health that he stopped the closure of hospital beds. He said over recent years governments had been increasing the bed stock “but not anywhere near what is required”.
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