Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

An initiative by the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children takes private beds out of public hospitals to designate them as private hospital beds. There is a debate within the HSE, which is the reason it is carrying out this re-examination. Senior figures in the HSE and the Department of Health and Children would argue that it relates more to the operation and use of acute beds and ensuring that discharge and admission policies are improved because 500,000 day care cases arise every year. When the last bed capacity review was carried out, the number of day care cases was very small.

I do not know how many acute beds are needed and I will not be drawn into guessing. I accept that our procedures and processes for admissions and discharges, where discharges sometimes do not take place for several days, are light years behind those of other countries. Resources could be better utilised. I do not know how many additional beds could result from better admissions and discharges procedures. In last night's programme, the HSE argued that the amount of lost capacity is approximately 150,000 bed days per year. The HSE will carry out this study but in the meantime, the Government will continue with its sizeable capital programme for health. More than €508 million will be provided in capital funding this year. We will continue our work in respect of the step-down beds that we have negotiated with the private hospital sector, the work carried out with the diagnostic services and private hospitals and the national treatment purchase fund.

A considerable degree of State funding will go towards procuring beds in all of these areas. The question of what is the cheapest way to carry out measures if all these beds were brought into operation is academic because the most important matter is to procure these beds. We will need more beds for elderly people because it has been predicted that this country will have 1 million people over 65 within the next 30 years. This is not the position at the moment. The HSE calculates that we probably do not need any more acute beds but an analysis of this issue is being carried out. I have doubts about this argument but I am not the expert charged with carrying out this statistical analysis. Others are carrying out this analysis and the figures will be produced soon.

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