David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)

I want to pick up on the audit on stroke services by the National Office of Clinical Audit, NOCA, published today. Perhaps I will start with Mr. Gloster. The audit does recognise some positives but there is a very stark key finding, namely, that "the overall picture reveals limited improvement since 2021”. Those are not my words; they are directly from the report. It states admissions are up 13% but that bed capacity is up by only 2%. It actually states that while every hospital has a stroke unit – I think there are just 24 of them – too few patients are able to access them because there simply are not enough beds. In the budget just gone, how much has been allocated for the national stroke strategy, and how many additional specialist stroke beds will be delivered next year as a consequence of that?