Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I appreciate that the Taoiseach did not have advance notice of my question, but this subject should be familiar to him. One of the central issues in the last general election was that of hospital beds. There was a debate about the number of beds required. The country was full of posters giving the respective figures. There was also a debate about how they were to be provided.

The solution in the programme for Government was to increase the number of dedicated public hospital beds by 1,500 and to provide 1,000 of those through the co-located hospital scheme. The original number of planned co-located hospitals was nine. This dropped to four in the recently revised programme for Government. How many hospital beds does the Government now intend to provide? Until now it has been accepted as 1,000 and there was a formula for that figure. Four co-located hospitals cannot provide 1,000 beds, which were to have been provided by nine.

Second, what is happening to the co-location arrangement? When will the four hospitals be built and when will we see a bed produced? The HSE was reluctant to go down this road but the Minister for Health and Children instructed the HSE that this was the Government's route. She justified her instruction by saying it would fast-track the provision of hospital beds. That was more than four years ago. We still have not provided a bed and there is no sign of these hospitals being built. Now, under the revised programme for Government, the number of such hospitals is being reduced from nine to four.

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