Ms Eilísh Hardiman:

The facility at Connolly Hospital was handed over on 31 July. There are two major elements to it, namely, outpatients and urgent care. Outpatients is fully operational, Monday to Friday, 9.a.m. to 6 p.m, providing general paediatric services. It is building up its services incrementally and it is working very well. In regard to urgent care, we have had challenges in recruiting emergency medicine consultants. When the facility opened, we had seven new emergency medicine consultants, which is a great increase, but due to unplanned leave and an inability to find locums, we could not expand the opening hours beyond Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The facility closes at 8 p.m. but it takes approximately three hours to clear the department of patients.