Mr. Tony Canavan:

I will respond to that. The district hospital performed an important function locally, for local communities but also, as Senator Kyne has described, served an important function for discharges from the Galway university hospitals. We were challenged with staffing between the two units in Clifden, St. Anne's, which is a long-term care facility, and the district hospital. A decision was taken, as was described, to concentrate our staff where they were required most, in the long-term care facility. Therefore, we reduced the availability of step-down beds in Clifden. That is not a decision we wanted to take and we are certainly conscious of the implications of it. Recruitment to both those units has been difficult for many years, not only in recent times and that is probably at the heart of our problems. We are aware now though that we are likely to be more successful if we recruit to fill vacant posts in the district hospital. We just received approval to do that in the last week and we are progressing it as quickly as we can with a view to reopening those beds. We do not have a date for reopening them yet, as the approval to proceed with recruitment was only received very recently.