Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister, the officials in the Department and the HSE staff for the work that has been done over the past eight or nine months to deal with a serious issue and challenge for everyone. I will touch on a few issues. I know that the Minister may not have all the answers to the questions I ask but he might provide some written replies.

I had a call this morning from someone whose daughter had been in contact with somebody who had been identified as positive for the virus. When that person rang their GP, they were advised that the GP could not refer them for testing but instead they had to wait to be contacted by the HSE. It was a further five days before there was contact. From start to finish, there was a gap of 12 days. In a case where someone knows they were in contact with a person who is positive for the virus and that person has not been contacted by the HSE, surely we should have a mechanism whereby a GP can refer the person for testing. That is my first question.

My second question is about elective hospitals and I have raised the issue for the past two years. We do not appear to have made any further progress on that issue compared with this time last year. We have not identified sites, the size of the hospitals, or when we are going to start going through the planning process. Where are we in relation to the three elective hospitals that are in the 2040 plan? Have sites been identified? When will that be progressed? When will we take decisive action on this matter?

The third issue I raise relates to employment in the HSE and is a particular bone of contention. We have taken on more than 20,000 additional staff in the HSE over the past four years. We have gone from 103,000 to 123,000 staff. We talk about developing community healthcare but, in that period of time, there has been an average 17% increase in all areas except public health nurses. Staff numbers have only gone up by 3.5% in that sector. Will that issue be dealt with?

It is fine to talk about increasing the number of acute beds but do we have the ability to increase capacity for doing testing, whether X-rays, MRI scans or any of the other tests that patients require?

Opening an additional 1,200 beds is fine, but will we at the same time increase capacity for testing and ensure that those beds are used efficiently, rather than it just being a case of people being in beds and waiting for access to the various scans and tests they require?