The Health Service Executive is to receive a bailout of €680m next month.
The money is to cover the HSE overspend of €510m, along with a range of other areas, such as an early access programme to drugs for high-risk patients with Hepatitis C and an initiative to tackle delayed discharges.
In a statement this evening, Health Minister Leo Varadkar said this "will have no impact whatsoever on the budget for the Department of Health for next year.” Varadkar also said that “the HSE Service Plan announced last week is unaffected and the figures remain unchanged.”
Mr Varadkar said €500m of the money was spent “in 2014 on increased levels of medical activity, drugs and therapies, medical appliances, the cost of State claims, and frontline staff. This has already been included in the base for next year's expenditure.
Fianna Fail Spokesperson for Health Billy Kelleher says services are only going to get worse and has demanded “an honest appraisal” from Mr Varadkar on the services that will be available next year, and warned that an ageing population will lead to problems for healthcare in Ireland.
“When you take into account the fact that the population is getting older,” Mr Kelleher said, “there’ll be increased demands on our services naturally. Because of demographic changes, services are going to be diminished, there’s no getting away from that.”
“What we’d really want from the minister now is an honest appraisal of what they can actually deliver next year, as opposed to facing into 2015 ... not knowing what services will be available for people that need it most,” he added.
