Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We would also have to talk about partition and we all know Fine Gael does not want to talk about that. With regard to Limerick, the Minister was talking about the additional beds and the building. Just in terms of this winter, how many of those beds are going to be open, if any? In the absence of those beds being open, what is being done to move the patients in the short term? In the short term, there are 82 people on trolleys and they need somewhere to go. I understand that at some point in the future there will be beds in the unit. The pressure is already on them and they are not even been built, commissioned, staffed or anything. The Minister referred to the new staff coming on stream. Will he express that as a percentage or figure relative to the number of actual vacancies?

There is an emergency department task force. I was on it years ago when it had a different name. We had our regular meetings and they were important, but we were accustomed to meeting at very short notice when there was an urgent need for it. Does the Minister not think there might be an urgent need for the emergency department task force to meet this week, perhaps as opposed to just hanging on until their next scheduled meeting, which I think is more than a week away?