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Irish Hospital Consultants Association launches Pre-Budget Submission;  Consultants say additional funding for Covid must be retained and redeployed as needed to fund significant deficits in acute public hospital care;  Failure to set, resource and achieve more robust targets is leading to longer waiting lists, with over 290,000 people waiting longer than a year to be assessed or treated by a hospital consultant;  6,000 additional acute public hospital beds required under revised National Development Plan by 2030 – with half of these beds needed urgently within the next 3 years;  Fill the 1 in 5 vacant permanent consultant posts without delay and appoint additional consultants to urgently assess and treat the 907,617 people on hospital waiting lists across the country.  IHCA President, Professor Alan Irvine: “The 2022 Health Budget needs to ensure that public hospital and mental health services have sufficient levels of current and capital funding to provide timely, high-quality care to patients. There is a high risk, in the aftermath of the extraordinary challenges we have all experienced since March 2020, that accumulated stress, health and general wellbeing problems will adversely impact on healthcare staff - and ultimately our patients. The solutions are ‘hiding in plain sight’. The Government must embrace them and implement them, so that our public health service is fit for purpose for the patients of today and in the years to come.”

Irish Hospital Consultants Association launches Mental Health Pre-Budget 2022 Submission;  Consultants say Covid-19 pandemic has exposed decades-long deficits in the health service which are impacting on adult and children’s mental health services across the country;  Government commits only 5.4% of health budget to mental health - half the level of European neighbours; Ireland has third lowest number of inpatient psychiatric care beds in EU;  An immediate increase of at least 300 acute adult psychiatric inpatient beds is required to meet recommended levels; More than 1 in 5 approved Consultant Psychiatry posts currently vacant or filled on a temporary basis and must be filled urgently.  Professor Anne Doherty, Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist and Chair of the IHCA Psychiatry Committee: “The pandemic has completely exposed the cracks across our public hospital system, including in our mental health services. The combination of gaping mental health capacity deficits with significantly increased demand for treatment of mental illnesses impacted by Covid-19 is stretching our acute services to breaking point.  It has focused our attention on the urgent need to dedicate specific funding and resources to mental health, anticipating the wider impact of the pandemic on our population.”

9 October 2018 - The Irish Hospital Consultants Association (IHCA) has outlined its grave concern that the 2019 Health Budget is unlikely to address the serious capacity deficits that are delaying the provision of public hospital care to patients, unless urgent capacity needs in our acute hospitals are addressed. The Association outlined in great detail in its pre-budget submission to the Minister for Health and other government Ministers that underfunding of public hospitals has led to record numbers of patients on trolleys and on waiting lists.

The IHCA Pre-Budget Submission: 2016

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