Mr. Tony O'Brien:

As Deputy Cullinane knows, the process includes the Herity report, which looked at demand versus capacity issues for cardiac catheterisation for the population served by University Hospital Waterford and recommended that capacity should be increased to achieve equilibrium between likely demand and likely capacity in the future. Since that time, the Minister identified as a policy priority, as he is entitled to, that that capacity should become equalised. In order to do so, we have commenced the process of recruiting additional staff to enable the hours of operation of the existing cardiac cath lab to be extended. In view of some of the issues we discussed earlier in terms of agency staff and recruitment, that is likely to be a longish process. The practical way in which capacity can be increased in the meantime is by bringing on site a private provider to provide staff and a temporary additional cardiac cath lab. As I said, this has been identified as a ministerial priority. At group level, there has been an effort to deal with the backlog through facilitating patients to travel to CUH, as Deputy Cullinane described. As he has agreed, a significant number of patients have been treated who otherwise would not yet have received their treatment. As a result of that, a procurement process, which I will not talk about until the Deputy has asked his questions, will soon commence to give effect to the provision of a temporary deployment of a mobile staffed cardiac catheterisation laboratory for a brief period at University Hospital Waterford.