Dr. Peadar Gilligan:

As committee members are aware, we have had significant issues with capacity and occupancy in the acute hospital system for many years in Ireland. There are currently 580,000 people on outpatient waiting lists and nearly 250,000 people awaiting various procedures or day case admissions. There was already huge pressure and massive unmet need within the system at a time, before Covid-19, when we were running our acute hospitals at between 97% and 104% occupancy. The public is aware of this because members of the public are waiting for procedures. They are also aware of the fact because of the level of crowding in emergency departments. We can never return to a situation where, when a patient arrives to an emergency department with an emergency condition, he or she is faced with a crowded waiting room, treatment area or resuscitation room. The only way to move away from that situation is by having the required capacity. We were advised in 2018 that a minimum requirement of 2,690 beds needed to be addressed. In the context of the Covid-19 crisis, that minimum requirement has, conservatively, increased to 5,000 beds.