Professor Brian Lenehan:

It comes down to demand capacity. We have a population of 400,000 patients, a singular ED and a hospital that only has 530 beds, which includes 49 paediatric beds. It is a matter of arithmetic. There is a higher demand that we are able to service. Without additional resources and bed capacity, that issue will persist despite all efforts on the part of everybody working hard on the ground. We need to address this matter with short-, medium- and long-term measures, which is what we have done.