Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

There is no date available for the Bill mentioned by Deputy Ó Caoláin.

I heard an interview given by a clinician from Beaumont on this matter and he set out the situation reasonably fairly. Three organs were sent to the UK for transplant to enable patients elsewhere to use the organs because it was judged that Irish patients' safety could have been compromised as a result of highly exceptional circumstances relating to the high number of transplant procedures carried out at that time combined with the unexpected availability of two additional donors, the interim accommodation measures being in place for safety reasons and the unavailability of the appropriate surgery-nursing skills mix.

On the day in question seven patients had received transplants in the preceding two days, on average, there are approximately two renal transplants every four days over the course of a year. Patients remain in a renal transplant unit for between four and seven days following their operation and they need to be accommodated in a particular environment.

There are capital works ongoing at the hospital on implementing the national plan for radiation oncology. For this reason, transplant patients had to be accommodated in another suitable part of the hospital. The construction is adjacent to the original 33-bed ward that included transplant recipients and Beaumont considered that the construction work posed a risk to their health and safety. Therefore, recipients are accommodated in a new eight-bedded, high efficiency unit on an interim basis.

It is important to point out that there were particular circumstances relating to this issue not related to the absence of work but on the basis that there was an overload of work, the availability of two donors, thankfully, and the need to ensure that the organs were used, in this case, in the UK. The explanations were given well.

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