Seán Power (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)

I will not prejudge the report. A timeframe of eight weeks has been provided within which the report will be completed and we are confident that will happen. The full facts will emerge at that stage.

Many people judge our health services by their experience of the accident and emergency services, which might be described as the shop window of the delivery of acute hospital services. People from every background with almost all medical conditions use accident and emergency departments. The extent and quality of service at such departments is affected by factors and issues right across health services from long-term care for older people to general practitioner services, diagnostic facilities, clinical and hospital management and investment programmes.

Accident and emergency departments deal with approximately 1.2 million attendances each year and, therefore, almost 3,300 people a day visit accident and emergency departments for treatment. Addressing the needs of patients who require emergency treatment and providing the necessary and appropriate care is a challenging task for health care systems generally, both in Ireland and internationally. The Government has allocated priority funding this year of €70 million for a ten-point plan to deal with the most pressing issues. This is not the total investment required for accident and emergency solutions but it does come on top of substantial funding provided for hospitals, long-term care, home help, primary care, general practitioner co-operatives and so on. These actions are also being implemented in conjunction with the health capital investment framework which provides €3.2 billion in Exchequer funding up to 2009.

The Health Service Executive is advancing the implementation of a series of measures to improve the delivery of accident and emergency services. These measures are aimed at improving access to such services, improving patient flows through accident and emergency departments, freeing up acute beds and providing appropriate longer-term care for patients outside the acute hospital setting.

A particular focus has been placed on those patients in acute hospitals who have completed their acute phase of treatment and are ready for discharge to a more appropriate setting. The HSE is making sustained efforts to arrange for the discharge of these patients to have more acute beds available in hospital for emergency patients. High dependency beds and intermediate care beds in private nursing homes along with home care packages are being used to ensure patients are appropriately placed.

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