Ms Noeleen Moran:

This is a question we get asked time and time again. The problem with it is that all our communities had these services to begin with. We have come together. We will all prioritise our own home areas, obviously, but we recognise that even the addition or reintroduction of one emergency department back into the mid-west would make a substantial difference to our community. There is a total mismatch between capacity and demand at University Hospital Limerick. I quoted the HIQA figures earlier. According to the second HIQA report, 79,644 patients attended University Hospital Limerick in 2022 alone. The Deloitte report, which was commissioned by UHL management, determined that 70,000 is what the emergency department was built to cater for, so we are already 10,000 over capacity. The second HIQA report also stated that we have a bed occupancy rate of 105% in UHL. The recommended rate is 85%, so we are way over capacity as it is. When it comes down to this, our campaigns have united because we agree that even the addition of one emergency department in the area will make a substantial difference to all patients in the mid-west region and, therefore, we are not prioritising-----