Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

A report in today's Irish Independent states that the number of children on hospital waiting lists is increasing and that the number of children who have been waiting for six months or more for procedures has gone up from 1,709 last December to 1,830. Everyone is agreed that there is a shortage of public hospital beds. There is disagreement as to how they are to be provided and some disagreement as to the number required. However, there is general agreement that there is a shortage.

In July 2005, the Minister for Health and Children issued an instruction to the HSE to enter into co-location arrangements for the provision of beds. Sites on the grounds of public hospitals would be made available to property developers, tax incentives would be provided for the construction of private hospitals and those private hospitals would provide 1,000 beds, thereby releasing an equivalent number in the public system. There were, originally, to be ten co-located hospitals. In the programme for Government negotiated in 2008 we were told that the Government would implement the plan for co-located facilities because it represented the quickest and most effective way of ensuring that public capacity was increased and ring-fenced. In May 2008, when I questioned the Taoiseach about this, he wrote to me and stated that approved bidder status had been approved for six of the hospitals and it was expected that project agreements would be signed shortly for three others. In other words, there were to be nine hospitals.

In the programme for Government re-negotiated recently between Fianna Fáil and the Green Party this has been scaled back. The new programme states that the Government will proceed with the current programme of co-location limited to already committed projects under existing project contractual agreements. We know from replies to parliamentary questions that contractual agreements have been signed for four hospitals. The revised programme for Government has scaled back the number of co-located hospitals from nine to four.

First, if the number of co-located hospitals has been reduced from nine to four, how many hospital beds will be provided? The original idea was that 1,000 would be provided. Second, when will construction work begin on the four hospitals? Third, when will we see the first of the beds promised by the Minister, Deputy Mary Harney, in July 2005, when she said the purpose of co-location was to fast-track the provision of hospital beds?

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