Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 23 April 2026

Public Accounts Committee

Hospital Insourcing Funding Arrangements: Discussion

2:00 am

Dr. Peter Lavin:

Absolutely. We are very aware and very conscious of that data. I am also even more conscious of the patient experience time data from the time the patient arrives in the emergency department to when they ultimately leave it to a bed in a ward or whether they go come.

What is not captured in that data is the fact that we are at this occupancy and all of this activity effectively comes through the front door and it is the other activity that we suppress, you know, the planned operations that we need to get for people. That is probably not captured because it is activity almost not planned because we know that we do not have the capacity. That is one of my concerns.

Ultimately, there is a plan for additional hospital beds. Hopefully, that can be expedited as well because that is really what we need.