Budget Statement 2024 Dail Éireann — 2023-10-10 ============================================================ Paschal Donohoe (FG), Dublin Central -----by 2023. HEALTH Just as housing has been a challenge for our society, a challenge that we are rising to, so, of course, the last three and half years have been a period of great challenge for our health services. Similar to other countries, the health sector continues to experience the impacts of the post-emergency phase of the pandemic. In recognition of these challenges the Government has prioritised very significant investment in the health services with a level of spending without precedent. As a result of this, we spend more of our national income on health than many other countries. This investment is delivering: • An expansion in capacity through the funding of over 2,500 additional beds in hospital and community settings and • An increase of over 22,000 staff through additional recruitment. We have cut costs for patients across the board; we have removed hospital charges; we have had the biggest expansion of access to free GP care in the history of the State----- --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-10-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:16+00:00 Sitting date: 2023-10-10