Sinn Féin will promise to phase out charges for prescription medicines across the board in its general election manifesto, and legislate for the step within the first 100 days if elected to government.
The party will this week launch its new healthcare policy as it fights to regain momentum following a series of scandals and controversies that have dominated the party’s pre-election run-in.
The plan has a net cost of €4.3 billion on top of the existing health budget and would take spending in the area towards €30 billion annually, with another €15 billion promised on capital projects in the course of a five-year term.
A centrepiece of that expanded spending is €1 billion to reduce the cost of healthcare through the above measures, with €350 million to pay for the universal abolition of prescription charges.
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Sinn Féin health spokesman David Cullinane will also promise to expand full medical cards to all those on the median income over five years in government, remove prescription charges for medical holders and roll out a new public GP contract for family doctors who want to work directly for the HSE.
GP-only medical cards would not be expanded beyond the current level due to the pressures such a step would place on family doctors, Mr Cullinane said.
It will also promise to introduce a Healthcare for All Act setting out the phased expansion of entitlements and committing the State to full public health cover by 2035.
In addition to reducing the maximum monthly prescription costs under the Drug Payment Scheme from €80 to nothing over five years, the party is also pledging a universal pharmacy scheme for women including HRT and contraception, and to abolish hospital car parking charges.
Despite a rolling series of controversies that have knocked Sinn Féin’s polling, Mr Cullinane defended his party leader’s handling of the Michael McMonagle, Brian Stanley and Niall Ó Donnghaile cases, arguing Mary Lou McDonald had stuck to a “robust process” and that Sinn Féin had “dealt with all those issues to the best of our ability, with the best of intentions”.
Mr Cullinane said Ms McDonald “did not seek to mislead people” with a glowing statement given in support of the party’s then Seanad leader Mr Ó Donnghaile when he stepped down, which outlined that he was departing the Seanad for health reasons when he had been suspended for inappropriately texting a teenager. Ms McDonald was forced to clarify the Dáil record over the age of the person involved last week.
He said some commentary about the party leader was “deeply unfair”.
Mr Cullinane said he accepted that polling for the party had declined and that it was not seeing its core message on issues like health and housing land with the electorate before the campaign in the way it had during the middle period of the current Dáil term.
He rejected the suggestion this was a failure on Sinn Féin’s part.
“I don’t accept that we’ve failed, I don’t accept that we haven’t put forward an alternative,” he said.
“For whatever reason, people haven’t heard it. For whatever reason, people are not responding to it. And that’s the reality. But we have a three-week campaign where people will focus on the election.”
He said the party felt a “heavy responsibility” to perform well. He renewed attacks on the Government and its healthcare policy, which he described as “normalising failure”, arguing he would be a minister for healthcare reform, putting funding of services and reform hand-in-hand.
Mr Cullinane said he accepted that there had been increased investment and policy changes in health but that Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly would “have to account” for waiting lists, crises in scoliosis and trolleys on wards, the controversy over University Hospital Limerick, and deficiencies in mental health and disability services.
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