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

That is not what is stated in my reply. Where have the increased number of staff been deployed? Have they been deployed in the areas most in need of additional staff?

From my time in public life, there have been long periods where we have been told by experts that we needed less hospital beds. That was a mantra up to seven or eight years ago. I do not know why that was the case, but it was. The needs of people would be addressed in a different way so fewer beds were required. That did not work. In the case of crowded corridors and patients on trolleys in the reception areas of hospitals, can we be assured that there is no vacant space in decommissioned wards in the same hospitals and-or can we ascertain at this stage the extent to which plans are afoot to provide accommodation adjacent to those hospitals, having regard to the experience in the past number of years, particularly in regard to the winter initiative? There is no sense in moaning about it if we do not do something about it and there are ways and means of providing emergency accommodation if it has to be done in the vicinity of hospitals. If there are facilities that can be used, then that should be done.

The Chairman referred to the INMO and the HSE calculations of trolley waiting times. We should be let into the secret of who is telling the truth. Somebody is not accurate and we need to know about it, otherwise the entire health services are being damaged as a result of the inability to deal with a simple issue.