Ms Susan Clyne:

There has been a change of government so the officials of the Department and of the HSE have to wait to see what the new Government will decide to do. The short answer is "No", there does not seem to be any plan for significant increases in capacity. We might get 100 or 200 beds but that just will not cut it. It certainly will not cut it this winter.

With regard to consultant vacancies, when we started this campaign we were talking about 100 vacancies. That then increased to 200, then 300. We have yet to be invited to any talks to deal with this crisis in manpower.