Professor Brian Lenehan:

We operate a bed bureau, and all of our patient flow takes place through that. What the Deputy is alluding to goes back to the fact that over the past two years we lost capacity in our medical assessment and surgical assessment units. These were appointed through the bed bureau, to which our GPs had direct access. The medical assessment units in Nenagh, Ennis and St. John's were operated through the bed bureau in collaboration with the GPs. As we evolve and as we sustain the work that we have been doing with the PMIU, it will be our intention to go back to our acute floor model, where we will have our emergency department, our surgical assessment unit and our medical assessment unit operating in UHL. The first piece of work we need to do is to decongest the site. We are just about there now so that we can get that bed bureau operating again.