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

I wish to move to another issue Dr. Molloy raised earlier, which was access to theatres. I was recently speaking to a consultant in the north west. She has a half day a week. She came back from the United States where she had two days of operating space when she was working in the hospital there. She tries to get three operations done in the half day. However, she has been advised that if a patient is not in theatre by 4 p.m, the procedure cannot take place and, therefore, she is finding that she is cancelling one in every three operations. How can issues such as that with theatres be resolved? There are theatres in all the hospitals and comparing their usage with theatre usage in the private sector suggests they are not being used for the same number of hours. How can that issue be overcome? I know it is a staffing issue and that it is necessary to work with staff from all sectors, but how can that issue be dealt with?