Mr. Liam Woods:

The hospitals in Ennis and Nenagh are doing some very good specific work and it would be unfortunate to disrupt it. The key point for us is that patients can flow to Ennis and Nenagh as needed. That is happening. One enabler of that is ambulance transport. We work very closely with the group and the NAS on that. There is already very strong work going on at both sites. I do not necessarily see the benefit in extending the reception of emergency patients into the hospitals in Ennis and Nenagh. Their use for step-down care for patients from Dooradoyle remains very important. It should be remembered that inpatients in the hospital at Dooradoyle tend to have the shortest lengths of stay in the country so it is showing signs of relative efficiency. It is hard to get away from how very busy the front door of that hospital is. There is a capacity challenge. As the Senator has rightly said, there has been significant investment in new capacity. That has been more than consumed by the rise in attendances over the course of the pandemic and up to now.