John Bruton
Question:36 Mr. J. Bruton asked the Minister for Health if he will outline his views on the recent recommendation of NESC that, on balance, real public expenditure on health should not increase in the period ahead.
Written Answers. - NESC Recommendations.
The recent NESC report A Strategy for the Nineties, includes a valuable analysis of the key issues in health policy, and its conclusions provided an important input to the formulation of the Programme for Economic and Social Progress.
The report discusses trends in public health expenditure, drawing in particular on the earlier work of the Commission on Health Funding, and arrives at a conclusion which may usefully be quoted in full:
Finally, it must be acknowledged that any definitive discussion of the level of health care spending would require more detailed information and analysis than is possible to provide here. However, it would be difficult in the Council's view to sustain the argument that public health spending should increase before the reforms proposed by the Commission are put in place.
As that quotation makes clear, the context of the NESC recommendation is their view that the structural deficiencies in the management of the health care system, which were identified by the commission, should be addressed before there is any real increase in the level of funding.
TheProgramme for Economic and Social Progress sets out the principles upon which the Government are basing their proposals for structural reform in the management of the health services. These proposals will be announced later in the year and will address the deficiencies referred to by NESC and by the Commission on Health Funding.
The allocation of resources to the health services in future years will depend on service needs and development priorities, within the overall public expenditure constraints. The question of whether increases in real terms are appropriate will be determined from year to year on the basis of these considerations.