Health care expenditure in Ireland 2017, by health care function

In 2017, over 11.8 billion euros were spent in Ireland’s health system on curative and rehabilitative care, this function took up the majority of the health expenditure in the country. An additional 4.47 billion euros was spent on long term healthcare and 3.1 billion euros on medical goods.

Health expenditure in Ireland compared to Europe 

In comparison to other European countries in 2017, Ireland ranked fairly low in terms of health spending as a share of GDP at 7.2 percent. Top of the list was Switzerland, which spent 12.2 percent of its’ GDP on healthcare in this year. While Germany and France both spent over eleven percent on health. Ireland’s closest neighbor in Europe, the United Kingdom, spent 9.8 percent of its GDP on health. 

Healthcare employees

In 2018, there were almost 65.7 thousand individuals employed hospitals in Ireland, since the year 2000 this figure has increased by over 23 thousand. While in the period since 2000 the number of general practitioners in Ireland has more than doubled to 4.25 thousand in 2018.