Sinn Féin spokesperson on Health David Cullinane TD has criticised the lack of funding and workforce planning behind the Minister for Health’s bed plan.

Teachta Cullinane said that the Minister’s wish list bed plan amounts to a pre-election publicity stunt, with the Minister launching a plan but leaving it up to the next Government to find funding and workers for it.

The TD for Waterford said the Government must be judged on its poor record of delivery rather than its incredible record of making promises it cannot deliver. He added that the Minister previously announced 1500 rapid build beds to be delivered over two years, which never happened, and that the 1200 beds announced in 2020 have taken four years to deliver.

Teachta Cullinane said:

“The Minister for Health’s wish list bed plan is a pre-election publicity stunt to paper over his failures across this Government’s term. The Government allocated minimal additional funding in 2024, so the Minister’s previous plan for 1500 beds disappeared.

“The Minister has announced 3,000 hospital beds on behalf of the next Government, without securing the funding to deliver them. It will be for the next Government to set out how to pay for the beds, because this Government has failed to commit the necessary funding for them.

“In our Alternative Budgets, we have clearly and consistently provided additional capital funding above the National Development Plan to deliver more hospital beds. In 2024, we would have funded the delivery of 1800 hospital beds over 3 years along with investments in primary and community care to make the health system more efficient and less hospital-dependent.

“We have also set out a series of workforce measures to train, recruit, and retain the healthcare professionals needed to safely staff these beds.  The Government, on the other hand, has imposed a dangerous recruitment embargo which has sent a disastrous message to graduates and workers abroad.

“The Health Service had a chance to actually deliver much needed hospital beds, but this plan was shortchanged in the Budget by the Minister and his Government. All the while, there are hundreds of patients on trolleys every day, and hospitals from Limerick and Cork to Letterkenny and Galway are experiencing exceptionally dangerous levels of overcrowding.

“The Government is dangling a promise in front of local communities with Government TDs promising to deliver in the years to come what they have failed to do over the last ten years. Many of these beds should and could have been delivered under this Government, but they chose to not fund them. How can anyone trust that these beds will ever materialise under Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil?”