Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Given the major problems in EDs, it would be helpful to know what additional nurses the HSE is going to provide this winter.

I want to move on to another aspect of acute beds and that is delayed discharges. I have figures from September across all hospitals. At that stage, and I suspect the figure is probably worse now, there were 621 delayed discharges in our acute hospitals. We can talk forever about the promised additional beds, but if there are 621 beds inappropriately occupied, that is a major problem. What is the HSE doing to reduce that number?