Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his presentation. Regarding recruitment, in overall terms since December 2014 there are now 40,000 more people working in the HSE. That is a substantial increase and it is about delivering services now.

I want to focus on capital expenditure. We are talking about current expenditure of €21.197 million and capital expenditure of €1.161 million. The Minister raised the issue of the refurbishment of community facilities, as a result of which there are fewer beds. My understanding is that in the Cork-Kerry region there are 240 fewer beds. The reason I am raising this issue now and why I raised it two weeks ago is that I was speaking to a person this morning who has a family member in CUH for over 15 months. The person could have been discharged 13 months ago. It will be the first of June before they are discharged because we cannot get a step-down facility. The person has complex needs, I fully accept that.

I know of two other people who have been in CUH three months longer than necessary because we do not appear to have step-down facilities for them. I know there was a meeting yesterday in relation to one of them. There appears to be a standoff going on within the HSE where the hospital wants to discharge but somewhere on the administration side, the nursing homes are not prepared to take them because the fair deal funding is not adequate and they are looking for additional funding so that that extra staff can be deployed to give these people the care they need. Why does it take three months to make a decision like that? A hospital bed costs €8,000 per bed per week. A nursing home bed, even with additional support would probably cost at most €2,000 per bed per week. What can we do especially in the Cork-Kerry region to deal with this issue? Beds are unnecessarily occupied in CUH and people who need to be hospitalised are complaining about not be able to get in and others are complaining about not being able to get out. This issue needs to be tackled by the Department asking serious questions about why there is such a delay.