Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The other area mentioned by the witnesses was critical care beds, and that there would be 331 by the end of the year. I know I have raised this before but a report from 2009 that is on the HSE website, Towards Excellence in Critical Care, talked about increasing from 289 beds to 579 beds in the 2010 to the 2020 period. There has been an increase in 42 beds in that ten-year period. In view of the increasing population, what do the witnesses believe is the appropriate number of critical care beds? I accept things have changed since 2009 and that there is probably a faster turnover of people in critical care and so on, but it is a big gap in those numbers. Have we a sense of how many beds we are looking for and will actually need in the next short period?