Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I asked my question for a reason and with no disrespect to Mr. O'Brien, I did not get an answer. I am not new to this game and I have been at this a long time. My question remains. If I were to attend an overcrowded accident and emergency department tomorrow morning, could I find out why it is overcrowded? I guarantee I would find out whether patients are bypassing their general practitioners, there is a lack of services or there are either no GPs or not enough of them. Are these the reasons? I will give an example of a case I dealt with in recent weeks involving a patient who had been referred again and again to an emergency department while awaiting a major orthopaedic procedure. The person was repeatedly referred to the hospital and discharged again, which is crazy. We will never solve our problems if continue to act like this. I have reason to believe that this is not the only such case. While I do not want to be critical, we need to do something to address the issues.

As regards age profile, Ireland does not have the worst age profile in Europe by a long shot. This argument is trotted out regularly. Romania probably has a better age profile than Ireland but we have far more young people than many other countries in Europe.

On bed capacity, I remember being in the health system when bed occupancy exceeded 100% and some wise guy asked whether there were two people in one bed. That was not the case but turnover was faster, more effective and more efficient.