Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will follow the thread of what the previous speaker has been saying about University Hospital Limerick. Some 96 people are on trolleys there today. On 26 January, the number peaked at 111. Records for trolley numbers are repeatedly broken at UHL. It is an incessant problem that goes on and on.

I will begin with a question to Mr. Reid and Mr. Watt. Who sits on the elective hospitals oversight group that is looking at elective hospitals under Sláintecare? A key recommendation was made to the Government last autumn that there would be three new elective hospitals in Ireland at Dublin, Cork and Galway. For the life of me, I cannot fathom why the mid-west and University Hospital Limerick were omitted from that. Will Mr. Reid and Mr. Watt please detail who is on that oversight group and the logic behind that decision? I can tell them that it was devastating for the mid-west not to be included on that shortlist.