Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This morning's discussion was very useful and will certainly help us with our deliberations on the roll-out of Sláintecare. The committee will try to follow up on some of the points made, particularly with regard to the five pieces of legislation that form the pillars to hold this up. We may be able to find out what is happening there and whether any work is being done in that regard. From the contributions of many of the members, I believe we are all in favour of an agile health service that can react and respond. That is the frustrating thing. There are many positive things happening within the system but we are so slow to do anything about them. There was mention of beds, University Hospital Limerick and the awful tragedy of people being on trolleys all of the time. There are plans for additional beds but these will not bring us to the level recommended ten years ago. In a similar vein, there were recently 11 ambulances outside of Tallaght Hospital because there were no beds inside. There is a proposal for a 71-bed unit in the hospital. If we had that unit, the issue would be resolved. There are sites at hospitals where work will not interfere with the everyday running of the hospitals. Again, an agile system would allow work on many of those sites to be fast-tracked.

Today's meeting was useful and I very much appreciate the witnesses coming in. I thank the representatives of the centre for health policy and management at Trinity College for their assistance to the committee on this very important matter. We will continue to consider this matter at future meetings.