Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I certainly will not disagree with her in any way about how disturbing the testimony was at the inquest.

I am conscious every time we discuss the issue in this House, rightly so, of Aoife Johnston's family. I express my deepest sympathies to her family, who have been devastated by her loss. My thoughts are with her family after what has been an unimaginably difficult and painful time.

I did hear of some changes that have happened in the hospital and it is worth briefly putting them on the record of the House. When the head of the HSE spoke yesterday about the emergency department, he talked about the fact that the number of doctors there since the time of Aoife's death has gone from 26 to 47, the number of emergency consultants has gone from ten to 15 and the nurse staffing levels in the emergency department have increased not only to safe staffing levels, but beyond it.

I also want to be very clear that when it comes to all of our emergency departments across the health service, they are exempt from any recruitment pause or anything else in that space.

I do fully accept that there is an urgent need to inject more capacity into the health services in the mid-west. I am truthfully not aware of the issue concerning Barrington's Hospital, but I will check for the Deputy because when Members make constructive suggestions in this House that is what they deserve to happen. I will certainly talk to the Minister for Health about that and see what his view, and that of the HSE, is on it. I am happy to come back to the Deputy directly in regard to it too.

I take her point that the work needs to come on track even faster. We have already seen 150 new beds opened in the UL Hospitals Group since January 2020, 98 of which are at University Hospital Limerick. As she alluded to, work commenced last year on a new 96-bed ward block. I am told it is expected to be open next year. This first block will add an additional 71 new acute beds to UHL. As the Deputy rightly said, the remaining 25 of the beds are replacing existing beds from the so-called Nightingale wards that require replacement and refurbishment to be in line with regulatory requirements.

Preparatory work has also commenced on a second 96-bed block. All steps are being taken to accelerate that. All 96 beds in that second block will be additional for the hospital, comprising 48 medical beds and 48 surgical beds. The Minister visited the hospital again recently and he met with doctors, nurses and senior managers. He announced a further package of interim or quick measures to try to provide capacity in a number of ways, including procuring community beds, 20 further step-down transition beds, rehab beds in County Clare and 16 additional fast-build beds. The opening hours of the region's three acute medical assessment units at Nenagh, Ennis and St. John’s are due to be extended to 24-7 on a phased basis. GP and advanced nurse practitioner on-the-door services are also being provided for the emergency department. I say that by way of, I hope, conveying a view that the Government is doing everything and anything it can right now to try and expand capacity, both physical capacity in terms of beds and infrastructure but also through alternative pathways of care.

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