Promises in Health

Village summarises the promises made by each of the political parties on Health

Fianna Fail 

• Introduce a Personal Health Check, which will include breast, cervical and prostate cancer screening.
• Create a national network of primary-care teams and ensure that every community has access to 24-hour GP cover.
• Increase the number of dedicated public-only hospital beds by 1,500. 
• Double the number of consultants to over 4,000.
• Build local injury clinics to take pressure off A&Es.
• Increase the availability of step-down facilities and long-term care beds.

Fine Gael and Labour 

• 2,300 more hospital beds.
• Free health insurance for every child under 16.
• Free GP visits for every child under five.
• Scrap plan to build private hospitals on public land.
• 1,500 new consultants, with a reduction in the number of junior doctors.
• 1500 new convalescence beds, rehabilitation and long-stay community beds: at least 600 of these in Dublin.

Green Party

• An extra 400 acute beds and 400 step-down beds per annum.
• Free primary healthcare for children under the age of six.
• Restore medical card eligibility to pre-1996 levels, ie 34 per cent of the population.
• Set up 24-hour primary care centres. • Increase the number of undergraduate places in medicine to 725 with non-EU places capped at 25 per cent.

Sinn Fein

• Healthcare free at the point of delivery, funded through taxation.
• Increase in health funding to 8 per cent of GDP.
• Immediate establishment of a Health Funding Commission to report within a reasonable timeframe on the projected costs of the transition to an all-Ireland system of universal provision.
• A National Public Health Plan for the provision and resourcing of acute care.

Progressive Democrats 

• A license for all hospitals to guarantee higher standards of hygiene and care.
• No-one will wait more than six hours for admission to A&E.
• 1,500 new consultants on new contracts.
• 1,000 new public hospital beds by private investment.
• No-one will face unaffordable nursing-home care costs. 

Socialist Party

• A free, publicly-owned national health service, funded through taxation.
• Investment to resolve the A&E crisis. • Scrap GP and prescription charges.
• Free primary healthcare.
• Health centres in all communities.
• Resources for carers, so the elderly can be looked after at home.
• State-provided quality nursing-home care.
• Consultants employed in the public sector should only do public work.