David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Just to follow up on that point, we have regular meetings with the officials from the Department of Health and the HSE who are establishing the regional health areas. The purpose of those areas is to better integrate acute, primary and community care to ensure that we do not have silos and that where we have blockages in communities which have an impact on hospitals, that, hopefully, we will have single tiers of management which can make decisions. There are many learnings from HIQA’s own reports.

Ms Fitzgerald spoke about managing beds. It is not all about more beds. We need more beds but we also need to manage the beds we have. Is that, in part, reflecting this issue that, at times, we do not have the step-down and recovery beds in the community or that sometimes people are in the wrong place at the wrong time because of a lack of alternative care pathways in the community? Is that partly the issue? I know there are other issues in terms of managing beds.