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

Does Mr. Gloster accept that referring someone whose health has disimproved from a nursing home to an accident and emergency department is not the way to deal with it? Is it not time to look for a new structure to deal with this? Can we have that in place reasonably soon? Quite a number of families have come back to me querying whether the right decision was made in referring the person in the first place. Then the days the person spent in the accident and emergency department were really traumatic for both the patient and the family. This issue needs to be looked at carefully

Regarding the 1.6 million unscheduled admissions, what percentage of that is from Saturdays and Sundays? One of the problems is that we are talking about rolling out community healthcare but a lot of the community health care finishes at five o'clock on a Friday evening. That is a huge challenge now that we need to start looking at as well.