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

I will move on to capacity in Cork and the wider Cork-Kerry region. I received a telephone call at 10 o’clock last night from a member of a family whose mother had been in the accident and emergency department of Cork University Hospital, CUH, since Sunday night. After 50 hours, this 92-year-old woman was still in the accident and emergency department. There is, therefore, a significant problem with capacity in Cork.

In fairness to the HSE in the south and south-west region, it presented a plan three years ago. Three years on, a site has still has not been identified. We raised this matter with the Minister last night. My understanding is that there is a report with the Department about that elective hospital. I need to know what kind of timeframe we have for the hospital before this plan moves from the Department of Health to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, as the Minister told us it would last night.

Can the proposal be fast-tracked and can the entire project be fast-tracked? When I was Lord Mayor of Cork in 2003 and 2004, we fast-tracked a project to build an extension to Cork City Hall. We invited tenders for design, build, finance and payback over 25 years and got a large extension to city hall build in a very short timeframe. Can we do that with elective hospitals, rather than going through a process that will take four or five years from site identification to getting a hospital physically built?