Sinn Féin has proposed to recruit more than 6,600 health frontline staff in its first five years in Government.
“If we are to stem the flow of doctors, nurses and others from our health system and attract home those that have already left, then we must commence sustained action to address the single biggest factor influencing medical migration — the toxic work environment that currently prevails,” the opposition party’s health policy concludes.
“Ad hoc, half-hearted recruitment drives will not cut it. To foster and maintain a productive and motivated medical workforce, we must put credible light at the end of the tunnel for staff that things will get better and stay better.
“We must guarantee this workforce that the intolerable staff-to-patient ratios will be improved and sufficient resources will be forthcoming that will allow them to actually practice medicine and provide healthcare, not firefight and pen push. This requires a commitment to ambitious multi-annual recruitment targets, with revenue allocated to back these up.”
The implementation of such a plan will require increasing spending on health by €3.3 billion over the next five years. This is in addition to a 2-to-3 per cent annual funding increase to accommodate demographic pressures.
Investment must prioritise automatic medical cards for children with disabilities, free GP care for all — commencing with lower income households, the policy document states. The party has pledged to abolish prescription charges and extend free prescription drugs to all. It has promised removal of hospital charges, the rollout of universal dental care, the expansion of ambulance services, and ending two-tier access to public hospital care.
A new Sinn Féin initiative — the Comhliosta — is pledged. This is “an integrated hospital waiting list management system, to introduce greater efficiency and fairness across the State and to achieve a sustained reduction in waiting times”.
Sinn Féin says it is committed to the realisation of a world-class system of universal healthcare, accessed on the basis of need, free at the point of delivery, and funded by progressive taxation for the Irish State.
gary.culliton@imt.ie
