Mr. Tony O'Brien:

We are now seeing some hospitals that never had a problem with delayed discharges and, therefore, did not benefit from the release of funds to combat it are now having to deal with higher category triage patients who are sicker and need to stay longer in hospital and that is eating up the bed stock that would otherwise be there. This is, by any standards, what people a generation below me call a wicked problem. There is no simple solution to it. It is not static in that the level of demand that the acute hospital system is facing this year is qualitatively different from the demand that the system faced in previous years. This is not necessarily by volume but certainly by complexity and by age profile of patients. As I said, we will be pursuing solutions vigorously in the 28 hospitals. The one thing I can guarantee, whatever the end result, is that it will not be for the want of absolutely singleminded effort to address this issue from every part of the HSE.