Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 19 May 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Briefing by Department of Health Officials

Photo of Ossian SmythOssian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will start with Mr. Breslin. I want to ask about people who have cancer, people with chronic illnesses and people in pain who up to now have been attending private hospitals for non-elective and very necessary procedures. Their procedures were simply eliminated, or their appointments disappeared. Understandably, we needed, or thought we needed, the hospitals for the surge. What is going to happen to those people? When are they going to get treatment or are any of them getting treatment at the moment or is there an alternative path for them? People have been coming to me to say that they have no idea when this is going to happen. Is there a date when we will be returning to treating at least non-elective patients who require treatment? I presume that some of these people will die and that this will be seen in the mortality statistics at the end of the year.

Our hospital system is often at 100% capacity, not just our emergency departments but our acute hospitals also. In the future we will have reduced capacity. Due to social distancing we will be down to 60% to 70%. How are we going to cope in that situation? It seems that we need the excess capacity from the private hospitals but we need to obtain it in a different way. Deputy Donnelly referred to this. Is there a way that we can use a less crude method done than just sequestering the entire empty private hospital? Can we obtain the procedures that we need to meet that extra capacity that will be required?

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