Emergency department attendances in Irish hospitals 2006-2018

There were over 1.32 million attendances to the hospital emergency department in Ireland in 2018, the highest amount in the provided time interval. The year with the lowest amount of attendances in the given time period was 2008, which had approximately 1.15 million attendances.

Health service in Ireland

Alongside the general rise in attendances to the emergency department, employment in Irish hospitals has increased. The total employment in hospitals in Ireland amounted to over 69.4 thousand, an increase of around 27 thousand since the year 2000. Furthermore, there were 4,058 general practitioners in Ireland, which is by far the highest number of GPs since 2000.

Spending indicators on health

Ireland’s expenditure on healthcare was 6.8 percent of GDP in 2019, this share has experienced some fluctuations over the years and was as high as 10.8 percent in 2012. In comparison to other European countries, Ireland ranked in the lower half of countries on the share of GDP spent on health expenditures. Switzerland had the highest share of expenditure on health, spending 12.1 percent of its GDP in this year.