Ms Sandra Broderick:

On the 96 beds, the Minister has said they will open. We will be opening them in stages of wards, so they will not all open on the one day.

Despite the gaps in physical capacity articulated in the report published yesterday, it is important we focus on the here and the now and what we are doing about it. I heard Senator Costello talk about patient experience time. Many people may find it hard to believe the patient experience time in University Hospital Limerick is the third best in the country, despite the well-articulated challenges we have with physical capacity. I take this opportunity to acknowledge staff in the ED and across all the hospitals in the mid-west. That is so important.

We have the full capacity protocol. We continue to maintain patient safety as best we can in the hospital and we de-escalate that emergency department as quickly as we can. People will still be put onto wards in terms of ward corridor care. That will be a feature of our health service.

The National Ambulance Service is working with us, supporting us to reduce the overall number of older people coming into University Hospital Limerick and giving them treatment in their nursing homes. It is important to point out we have a serious focus on people over 75 who come into the emergency departments. We have reduced significantly the number of breaches in patient experience time for over-75s. It is a pure team effort to make sure that happens.

We have a seasonal adjustment plan in place from 1 October. That is getting the balance right between scheduled and unscheduled elements.

On core cancer services, we are the only region delivering on every one of those KPIs.

It is important we talk about all the stuff going on in the region. For all the talk of trolleys, there is a heap of other stuff that goes on in terms of healthcare delivery.

On senior clinical decision-makers, we have them rostered over seven days, which is phenomenal in terms of maintaining patient safety in our hospital and improved discharges at weekends.

Nenagh CNU has gone back to being operationalised as a long-term care facility. That was a huge loss in recent weeks in term of our ability to maintain trolleys at the steady state we had done. The 96 beds will obviously help us to come back on that, however. Despite all our challenges, I want to put on the record that the staff there do a wonderful job every day and will continue that into the winter. We will do our best to make sure patients in the region receive timely access to healthcare.