John Moloney (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I am responding to the Deputies on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Harney, who cannot be here.

The Government is committed to ensuring the delivery of the best quality health services possible, in an effective and efficient way, and ensuring patient safety is of paramount importance in order that people can have confidence in the services and the best possible patient outcomes can be achieved.

There is significant international and national evidence that acute complex health care, particularly for emergency medicine, complex surgical services and critical care, should be provided in hospitals which are suitably staffed and equipped and which undertake sufficient volumes of such activity in order to maximise clinical outcomes and, more important, ensure safe services. At the same time there is a significant range of less complex care which can continue to be provided safely in smaller hospitals.

Reorganisation of services must occur in consultation with the key stakeholders and on an incremental basis.

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