Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)

I will touch on one or two other issues. One relates to step-down facilities. A problem I have come across involves, for instance, a person in a hospital who needed access to Dún Laoghaire rehab facility but that person occupied a bed in a public hospital for four months. Are we doing anything to identity step-down facilities where everything possible has been done for the person in hospital and no further work can be done, but they still need ongoing treatment? The idea of a step-down facility is that it would be close to a hospital so we can free up beds more quickly.