Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. I am in the awkward position that I have to be here and next door at the same time. It is very difficult to be in two places. Sometimes it is difficult to be in one place at the correct time.

We have had extremely good performance in the delivery of health services in some hospitals and not-so-good performance in others. To what extent has there been a comparison between places where there are good outcomes, good performance and steady progress in line with expectations and the other places? For instance, there is case of University Hospital Limerick, which members visited recently. There is a hospital under construction while, at the same time, patients are pouring in from all sides and from places that had shut down their emergency departments.

That cannot be done, unless the hospital to which they are required to go, has a system of referring on patients to somewhere else because one cannot take an unlimited number of patients ad infinitum.