Mr. Damien McCallion:

As Mr. Mulvany has said, capital developments take time. The winter plan is not the forum for beds and what we want to get to is having a clear plan, not just for Galway but for all sites. However, they are going to take time. The cost of capital investment etc. is rising, as the Senator knows. As part of the process, it is all the other investments too, such as the older persons teams, specialist teams, chronic disease management, the work around general practice, using community beds and private capacity. We are trying to use all of those to assist over the coming years while the other projects are advanced because they will take time. Clearly, we cannot have people in the situation they are in. We have to try to minimise that in an environment where demand is increasing. We talked about the numbers earlier. There has been a more than 5% increase year on year in ED attendances and higher numbers of older people being admitted to and attending EDs. All of those other pieces are really important and that opens up the wider questions about workforce and so on and how we structure the services, both inside the hospital and between the hospital and community.