Mr. Bernard Gloster:

It would be good if the revision of the 2018 capacity review could be done quickly and does not take an inordinate amount of time. To be fair the Minister has been quite supportive of it. I absolutely agree that we must plan for the future. We have to get on with the 96 beds if that is what we have decided. If we decide to have another 40 beds somewhere else we have to get on with it and see whether we can shorten the process. Public sector capital projects are by their nature slow.

What I would equally say, and I have to hold onto this as being important, is that just building extra capacity is not the only part of the solution and is not the only part of the problem. We do have process and practice challenges in most parts of our system that require a significant step change in how we deal with them. If we hold onto and keep all of the processes and practices that may not have served us well for years in any part of the Irish healthcare system we can build all the beds we like but we will keep filling them by the same process and we will not necessarily achieve the full benefit of having them. I am not a denier of capacity but for me it is capacity and process.