Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I visited the group from Donegal to Galway over a two-day period a fortnight ago and I saw the infrastructure, along with all of the other challenges. On the community neurorehabilitation team, I am not sure what the plan is for the chief officer or where she plans to locate that team. It is usual that the team would be located together but I am not aware of what the location is for CHO 2. We have certainly marked that to come back to the Senator on.

With regard to Saolta, I have spent quite a bit of time in Galway University Hospital and I have seen the plans. Thankfully, there are now at least plans and there is an overall plan. The new radiation oncology unit there is an exceptionally impressive building. However, it is almost like a stepped jigsaw of a site, and you have to do the labs to do something else to do something else. The temporary emergency department that was constructed during Covid has helped a little, although I would not blow my trumpet about it. I spoke with the consultants there. If I was to put it simply, and I have discussed this with the Minister, without disrespecting the need in other parts of the country, Galway is further behind the curve than everybody else in a lot of its acute hospital infrastructure development by virtue of the fact the debate was too long. While I am not criticising anybody for it, the debate was too long as to whether it was to be Merlin Park or the city. There were a lot of views on and interest in that over the years, and I am not going to revisit it. There is now a clear plan and it is there. Certainly, at every opportunity to expedite capital development there, I will be pursuing it.

I was in some of the wards. They are exceptionally challenged at the moment on every front. There is no question but that we have to try to see how quickly we can step that up.