Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I am replying to the Deputy's leader. We have increased capacity in practically every hospital in the country. Last year, the HSE contracted from the private and nursing home sector more than 1,000 beds, concentrated particularly but not only in the Dublin area. This year, it plans to contract 360 beds with the private sector, more than 220 of which will be in Dublin, and it proposes to extend public capacity by 446 this year by building on what it did last year. Of course, it is already planning beds for next year. That will provide a total of nearly 800 long-stay beds during the course of this year, comprising 350 private and 446 public beds. Significant resources are being put into that and they are being used well. This comes in addition to projects such as the rapid access clinic, which is a new initiative and is now up and running to treat a large number of elderly people, the hospital in the home service, which is being used by teaching hospitals including Connolly and is a very good service, and the out-of-hours system, including the Dublin north doctor on call service in particular, for which the HSE deserves great credit. For almost a quarter of a century, there was no out-of-hours service by GPs in the Dublin area. I acknowledge the work done by GPs and we now have centres in Ashtown Gate, Coolock, Ballymun and North Strand which offer excellent services every night and on Saturdays and Sundays by the best qualified GPs. GP diagnostics and community intervention schemes have also been established and work is ongoing by the accident and emergency task force.

Deputy Kenny knows that the improvement of 57% in January is an enormous figure. I do not like to see anybody waiting for anything but it is impossible to reach a situation like that. However, they are working hard to reach it, which means at times that elective cases are not taken because if there is huge pressure on accident and emergency units and no free beds, hospitals will not admit elective patients. It is not perfect but that is the position.

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