Maria Byrne (Fine Gael)

I thank Mr. Watt, Mr. Gloster and their teams for coming here today. I have two or three questions. One is to do with insourcing. I know from the reports I have read that it has had a positive impact. Is there any hope of using this to reduce waiting lists for scoliosis in children? Is it something they have looked at? On the public-only contract, I am going to deal specifically with UHL. I acknowledge a number of consultants have come on board down there. When the new beds open, how many beds will we be up? I am very conscious of the fact that UHL has had the highest number of people on trolleys. When we look at other hospitals, I think UHL was up somewhere around 118 in the last report. Cork, I think, followed next in the fifties and everything else was below that. Will the new beds address the issue? How many more will we need?

Mr. Watt referred to effective discharge planning. I have been speaking to people in the home support services and dealing with a couple of clients recently who had to wait for their home support package to be put in place. There seems to be a shortage of people in that area. When the recruitment embargo was on, some of them were not replaced. Are there plans to top up the numbers? A lot of people coming out of hospital certainly want to go home where possible. On another issue I have raised often, I thank the HSE for putting the likes of specialist nurses into hospitals, especially in UHL. I met the MS society recently. There are two or three specialist nurses there now and they had not been not there for a long time previously. People are able to ring up and have their conversation with the nurse. It is helping with people not going into hospital. They are just a couple of questions.