Mr. Damien McCallion:

I will come in briefly. The contrast drawn by the Deputy is fair. The clinical advice at the moment, as the Deputy knows, is around model 4 and trying to build up the services in other areas. There is no question but that Limerick is constrained in its acute bed capacity and hence the investment in the 96-bed block and the 16-bed modular block this year. Consideration is also being given to another block, if possible. That consideration was submitted in the plan here to the committee by the region. It is about looking at the region in its totality. There are aspects of the system in Limerick that work well, for example, how the community works. UHL has the lowest delayed transfers of care for any model 4 in the country. The CEO has asked each of the regions to look at their overall health infrastructure to see how that maps out but it obviously needs to be guided by policy and, as the Deputy knows, the small hospitals framework set out the policy around that for the region.