Martin Daly (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)

I thank Mr. Tierney, Mr. Gloster and their teams from the Department of Health and the HSE. I have a short timeframe here. The National Office of Clinical Audit's report on stroke care in Ireland is disappointing. There has been a lot of improvement in stroke care over the years. We see that the pace has not kept up in terms of beds. Even where there are beds, patients are not getting them. There are stroke beds in a hospital but somebody admitted with a stroke is not getting into a stroke bed. Even if they do, they are not getting the length of time in that stroke bed that they should be getting.

The National Office of Clinical Audit lead, Professor Joe Harbison, said that a plateau had been reached around some areas of stroke treatment. Every hospital now has a stroke unit, but too few patients are being treated in them. There is almost no private acute stroke care, so the public system is the go-to. This is a devastating illness. What are the HSE and the Department doing in creating additional capacity and making sure that the capacity that is there is utilised fully for people who need it, especially those with this devastating illness, and that the supports are there to get them out of hospital? Early discharge support is something around 12%, which means people are stuck in hospital when they should be out in the community receiving care.