Stephen Donnelly, the health minister, has defended Robert Watt, his secretary-general, saying he “can get things done”, after suggestions in the Dail that Watt lacks the mindset to push for a properly funded health service.
During Dail statements last Thursday regarding the shortfall in health funding in the latest budget, Roisin Shortall, the Social Democrats TD, said the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform was a “disgrace”. She said department officials failed to understand the needs of a properly functioning health service.
On Watt, Shortall said: “I cannot help but comment on the fact that the secretary-general ... came directly from what was then the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.
“Is there a mindset there that does not understand what a public health service is, and does not understand that we have an agreed, all-party strategy for health that is about creating a single-tier, universal health service, comparable to what is available in every other country in Europe?
“Do those people not get that? What is wrong with that mindset there, that it is so shortsighted and unappreciative of the shortcomings in our health service?”
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Donnelly was quick to ask Shortall to retract her comments as Watt was not there to “defend himself”, but she stressed that it was the job of the secretary-general to secure adequate funding for their department.
In response to Shortall’s comments, Donnelly told The Sunday Times: “I asked Deputy Shortall to withdraw the remarks in the chamber at the time. I hired Robert Watt. I hired him because I believed that one of the single biggest impediments to sorting out our health care system was everything taking too long, and people having reviews and business cases and strategic assessments and then re-reviews of business cases and then having to think about how it might all work and then going back to the start to have another think.
“We’ve now had three record years of recruitment into the HSE. And in fact, what we’re having to do is tell people you’ve already reached your targets for this year. So those comments were entirely without basis.”
In the latest budget, Donnelly sought an extra €2 billion to maintain current levels of healthcare service; he was granted €708 million extra for existing services, bringing the health budget to €22.5 billion.
Bernard Gloster, the HSE chief, said funds allocated to health in the budget were inadequate and that the HSE plan for 2024 would have a built-in deficit.
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Opposition parties have criticised the underallocation, arguing that maintaining deficits is no way to run a health service properly.
Gloster has also announced a recruitment freeze until 2024, including frontline workers such as junior doctors and healthcare assistants.
In terms of the effect of the budget shortfall on patient care and HSE staff, Donnelly said last Friday that there was “considerable funding” to address waiting lists and the trolley crisis, although he also said “there is an ongoing question about running services as they are”.
There is funding for the emergency and urgent care plan, the waiting list action plan and funding for “a number of new hospital beds, ICU beds and community beds”, he said.
“There isn’t the same funding next year to continue at the same pace we have been continuing last year. So we’ll be focusing on obviously all of the progress that has been made, that remains, and we will be focusing on consolidating that and making sure we can provide the best possible services,” Donnelly added.
