Ms Anne O'Connor:

The Chairman mentioned Ennis, Nenagh and St. John's, which provide support to UHL. As it stands, every day we are transferring around 17 patients to these sites. We also know that those units have medical assessment units and admit directly, which means people do not have to come through UHL to go there.

At Ennis, we are looking at the capacity relating to supporting the new IPC, infection prevention and control, guidance. It is doing much work around endoscopy and bowel screening, which will continue.

St. John's is at 80% of its planned activity already. We are working at how it can increase that by looking at diagnostics to support other cancer and other services as part of our service continuity work.

We are working with the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, and Nenagh on dedicated funding. It is already doing cataract activity which will continue. We are looking at other initiatives the hospital can do to support care within the main site.

There is much work going on with those sites and UHL. There is activity already. We also have the University of Limerick Sports Arena in Limerick which is operating with about 30 patients.