Mr. Liam Woods:

That will go slightly over but the closed beds issue is moving - 301 are new beds that were not previously in the system and 154 are existing beds that are now re-opening. The 440 the Deputy is referring to is the total of the two. We have spoken about new beds.

There was a comment about the percentage of people who need to be seen in hospital. We study the propensity for hospitals to admit patients, which varies throughout the country but on average approximately 25% to 27% of attendees are admitted from an emergency department. In some hospitals that is quite a bit higher but most studies clinically undertaken would indicate the propensity to admit is reasonable and proportionate in most circumstances. There is a separate point, which we have also studied, which is the need for a patient to be in the particular bed they are in on any particular day. It is a slightly different question. One finds that more than 20% of patients could be somewhere else on any given day but that is about investment in somewhere else. That is obviously helped by the clearing of delayed discharges and, as the director general has shown, the graphs indicate that.

The Deputy had a specific question on patient experience time in Drogheda.