Máirín Quill
Ceist:6 Miss Quill asked the Minister for Health if he will give details of the unit cost of an individual liver transplant.
Ceisteanna — Questions. Oral Answers. - St. Vincent's Hospital Budget.
Máirín Quill
Ceist:61 Miss Quill asked the Minister for Health if he will provide a separate budget for the national liver transplant programme at St. Vincent's Hospital, Elm Park, Dublin 4 which would protect the hospital's overall budget from being reduced for this programme.
I propose to take Questions Nos. 6 and 61 together. In determining the annual allocation for a hospital, my Department identifies, where appropriate, the specific amount of funding provided for the approved developments in particular specialties. However, it is a matter for the hospital authority to determine its overall expenditure budget in line with the agreed level of allocation to support its agreed service levels.
In the case of St. Vincent's Hospital the national liver transplant programme is identified in respect of additional development funding in this manner. The average cost of an individual liver transplant is £33,000.
Will the Minister accept that the high cost of liver transplants and similar high-tech operations is putting a major drain on hospital budgets and that there is a danger other areas of hospital activity, which are equally essential and important, will become under-funded? Will the Minister acknowledge that the time has come for his Department to consider making a special and separate allocation for all high-tech operations?
The Deputy is underscoring the difficulties facing me as Minister for Health in allocating resources because of the very expensive new techniques and specialties coming on stream. I had an opportunity to visit the national liver transplant unit on a number of occasions during the past year. Marvellous work is being carried out there and some of my constituents have benefited from liver transplants, one of whom has had three transplants in the past 12 months. We have a national duty to provide funding for people who need such transplants and we must find it over and above the normal allocation. I accept the Deputy's comments in that regard. That is our attitude when allocating resources to hospitals such as St. Vincent's.
I agree with the Minister's comments in regard to the inestimable value of such operations and I welcome the fact that they are carried out here now. One of our colleagues, the Minister of State at the Department of the Marine, Deputy O'Sullivan, had such an operation recently. I again ask the Minister to examine in the next financial year the need to ensure that other types of hospital activities and surgery are not neglected or underfunded as a result of providing funds for liver transplant operations.
I assure the Deputy that I will do my best to resource every area of operation of the acute hospital services. The Minister of State at the Department of the Marine, Deputy O'Sullivan, had a by-pass operation from which he is recovering well.
I apologise, but that is also a high-tech operation.
By-pass operations are extremely routine although very complicated and are of great benefit to many people.
The allocation for the national liver transplant programme for 1993 was £1.02 million out of a total allocation of £36.5 million to St. Vincent's Hospital. Acute hospitals are expensive to run.