Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

The Deputy is absolutely right. We did not have enough ICU beds but thanks to the significant investment in permanently strengthening the health service in recent years, we have increased that number. We are still hovering at just under 300 ICU beds which is not enough. We know that. We need more beds than that and it is our intention to put in place the infrastructure and train and recruit the very specialised staff that we need as quickly as we can. In fairness to the Government, we have been supported to do that in terms of new service developments, including in ICU. In the last three years about €1.7 billion worth of investment has been made and we are working hard to recruit all of the extra staff----