Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 27 January 2021
873. Deputy Sean Sherlock asked the Minister for Health the budgetary analysis being carried out to plan for long Covid-19 impacts in his Department and each State agency under the remit of his Department in tabular form. [4489/21]
View answerBudget 2021 saw an extra €4 billion added to the health budget. This unprecedented additional amount of money signals our determination in government to fund an expansion of, and improvements in, our health and social care services. The main areas of focus for the unprecedented allocation in Budget 2021 is on delivering the capacity shortfalls, particularly in Acute Hospital services, which were highlighted by the 2018 Health Service Capacity Review, supporting the implementation of Sláintecare by moving care provision to community settings where appropriate, making strategic investments to progress a range of long term health strategies and responding to the immediate service pressures and challenges which have been caused by COVID-19. Included in the 2021 estimate for the Health vote €1.676 million to deal with the impacts of Covid-19.
The table below summarises Department and State Agencies 2021 COVID-19 planned Budget spend:
|
Department/State Agency |
€ million |
Budgetary Analysis |
|
Department of Health |
1,676 |
This is made up as follows: PPE €450, Testing and Tracing €445m, Vaccination Programme €200m, Covid Specific Supports and other Supports €581 |
|
MENTAL HEALTH COMMISSION |
0.65 |
This is made up of: Developing for video conferencing to enable remote mental health tribunal (450k) and €200k for agency staff to continue the Covid monitoring of all mental health facilities during 2021 at the request of the Department. |
|
HEALTH INFORMATION AND QUALITY AUTHORITY |
.0042 |
This is made up of: €42k on PPE to deal with the impact of COVID-19 on our day-to-day operations in 2021. |
In terms of Budgetary analysis carried out to plan for long Covid-19 impacts the following analysis and planning activities are being undertaken:
Recognising the unprecedented uncertainty faced by policy-makers in planning for the progression of COVID-19, a PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) Estimation Model has been developed to provide for a transparent, dynamic, evidence-based estimate of required PPE for the Irish healthcare system.
Also, in the coming year, a robust and comprehensive Testing and Tracing system will be critical to the effective functioning of our health services and the broader economy. Testing and contact tracing continues to be a key component of the Government’s response to the pandemic, and to ensure we have a comprehensive, reliable and responsive testing and tracing operation, central to our public health strategy for containing and slowing the spread of COVID-19.
The COVID-19 Vaccination Programme is unprecedented in terms of the complexity, scale, scope of work and resource required to deliver it effectively in the expected timeframe. Successfully implementing this National Vaccination Programme for COVID-19 is critical to (1) contain, over time, the spread of the virus, (2) mitigate its health impact by protecting the at-risk population and (3) restore economic growth by allowing a return to normal economic and social activity.
However, it should be recognised that there remains considerable uncertainty concerning the timing of vaccine delivery in 2021 as the environment is extremely dynamic. It would be expected that the progressive rollout of the COVID vaccination programme will in due course impact on the budgetary requirement for other COVID-19 responses such as PPE purchasing and Testing and Tracing, but the timing of such savings impacts is not yet clear. As a result, we will keep the budgetary allocation for specific COVID-19 programmes under ongoing review within overall allocation that I have noted of €1.676bn as the picture becomes more clear over the coming months.
Finally, Deputies will, like me, be very mindful of the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of the population. As part of the Department’s joint research programme in healthcare reform with the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), recently published research provides projections of expenditure for public acute hospital and adult acute psychiatric in-patient services in Ireland for the years 2018–2035. These projections are based on new ESRI projections for population and economic growth, both of which consider the impact of COVID-19. A range of alternative projections are presented reflecting alternative assumptions about population growth, trends in health and life expectancy, policy change, and costs. The report contains the most comprehensive mapping of Irish public hospital expenditure to have been published.
