Mr. Damien McCallion:

On the international piece, it is a challenge right along the western and southern seaboard from Inishowen. As the Senator said, equally, the urban challenge is also that world challenge. Sometimes circumstances intervene and, as Ms Crehan-Roche said, word of mouth leads to the identification of someone who has moved away. It may be possible to catch them to present them with an opportunity. We do a similar thing with consultants. When we were looking for emergency department consultants recently, we put out feelers around the world to make contact with people who have roots from Ireland and might come back. It is through many of those informal and formal contexts that we can try to close the gaps in large academic centres and in rural parts of the country.

I will return to the Senator’s question about Galway. I apologise as I should have clarified the matter. There are 12 beds in Galway and ten delivered. However, a change that is happening in the emergency department infrastructure there may facilitate better flow in relation to some of the beds and release some capacity. Although Covid is clearly changed, we still have Covid pathways in hospital. Having visited an emergency department recently, I know we still have to have those separate pathways and testing. It still impacts on our flow in hospitals. Some of that will also help to give some benefit.

On the acute capacity, it is important that we have put in much capacity in recent years. The next jump will be about larger projects that will clearly take a longer lead time. That makes it more important to work with the community on how we can improve the flow of patients in the short to medium term, while, obviously, the bigger capital projects start to develop across the country.