Health care expenditure in Ireland 2021, by health care function

In 2021, Ireland’s health system spent over 15.7 billion euros on curative and rehabilitative care, this function took up the majority of the health expenditure in the country. An additional 3.3 billion euros was spent on medical goods and six billion euros on long term healthcare.

Health expenditure in Ireland compared to Europe 

In comparison to other European countries, Ireland ranked fairly low in terms of health spending as a share of GDP at 6.8 percent in 2019. Top of the list was Switzerland, which spent 12.1 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 10.3 percent of its GDP on health. 

Healthcare employees

In 2020, there were almost 72.1 thousand individuals employed hospitals in Ireland, since the year 2000 this figure has increased by nearly 30 thousand. Furthermore, in the period since 2000 the number of general practitioners in Ireland has more than doubled to 4.3 thousand in 2020.