Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On the Deputy's second question on operating theatres, I do not know what the specifics are but if he sends me the details, I will take a look at them. Regardless of what they are, I agree that it takes the State too long to add facilities to the public health service. It takes too long to add critical care beds and operating theatres and to build hospitals.

It is something the Department and the HSE are looking at. I accept it may not apply in this case but what the hospitals say to me is that one of the factors that slows this is planning, the environmental impact statements and so forth. They can take a huge amount of time. We also have quite an onerous set of steps that the State must go through in terms of capital appraisal and business cases, particularly when we get over €100 million. At that stage we are into a whole different process that really takes a long time. We are looking at ways to speed that up and I absolutely share the Deputy's concern.

The Deputy made a very important point on the operating theatres. We need more operating theatres and we must be able to run the ones we have longer. To do that, we must invest and grow the workforce, particularly around theatre nurses. There is a case to be made for an assistant role within theatres. I am aware the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation and possibly others do not agree with that position but there is a case to be made for it. We must invest in more theatre nurses. The HSE is doing much work and the chief nursing officer in the Department is doing much work on that but one of the keys to this is the group of theatre nurses. We must be creative. For example, I met representatives of Children's Health Ireland in the past two or three weeks to speak about paediatric orthopaedics. We are funding a fifth operating theatre at Temple Street hospital and much work at Cappagh. We need more theatre nurses. One of the things the director of nursing said to me was that one of the biggest challenges in Dublin is cost of living and nurses finding accommodation. We need to be creative and if that is ultimately what is stopping us hiring nurses, we need to look, for example, at the State, the HSE or whatever it may be taking over and providing accommodation. Ultimately, this comes down to treating patients waiting too long for care.