Mr. Liam Woods:

To answer the second part of Deputy Durkan's question, on the notion of studying capacity and providing capacity to meet service demand for the future, which I was just coming to, in my experience structures will not resolve the service and process issues. We have looked at capacity, however, and we see clearly that there is demand in our emergency departments and, as the Deputy mentioned, regarding our inpatient and day-case waiting lists which is in excess of our capacity to supply. If we look at the demographics over a period of perhaps the next 30 years and look at our current model, without changing the model of care the total requirement for bed days within our hospital environment will double. Clearly, the response to that - some of the committee's earlier discussions are relevant to this aspect - lies in identifying what kind of solutions are necessary, for example, investment in community-provided services, in primary care and in social care. Older person services, particularly in the community, will be key to addressing that growth in demand.

In terms of the here and now, the winter initiative has been focused and of the €40 million provided, €34 million has gone to providing services in the community. That recognises that we need to provide space in our hospitals for work to be done. We recognise the need to grow that space, but we also see that access to community services, both primary care and social care, is a vital component in that regard.

Deputy Durkan asked a specific question about surge capacity and how we handle it. As the committee will be aware, hospitals are running at 100% in any event at present. An earlier contributor pointed out that most of the major hospital are in that position. I said that 85% would be a more desirable norm in terms of hospitals internationally, and allowing for proper scheduling of work.