David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Of course I appreciate different hospitals have different challenges, and I will get to one of those hospitals in a second. However, we have a much better patient-focused service operating out of one hospital with very high levels of efficient pre-admission and post-admission patient flow, good management of the emergency department and good integration with community services so patients can be discharged quicker. We have the same capacity challenges in Waterford that other hospitals have. I do not want to labour the point, but if Waterford is doing something right, and there are other hospitals in Drogheda and elsewhere which have really got to grips with the trolley crisis as well, we have to make sure that those learnings are applied across all of our hospitals. It begs the question as to how effective the patient experience, the patient management and the management of other hospitals are, if we can have one hospital perform at that level while others do not. It does beg questions as to whether or not we have good practice across all of our hospitals.