Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Every Adjournment debate another invitation is forthcoming. As the Deputy is aware, hospitals are only one small part of the health service. There is much more to the health service than acute hospitals, and there are almost 50 of them so if I were to bunk off one day a week and do site visits it would take me a year just to get around them. That is something I intend to do but it will take quite some time to get around to visiting 47 acute hospitals, never mind all the other health care and primary care institutions.

It is the intention of the HSE in the coming months or certainly over next year to bring in outside consultants - people who are experts on how hospitals are run in other parts of the world - have them go into particular hospitals and work out the way those hospitals can be better run and better managed. It is obvious when we examine the trolley numbers - the fact that they peak on Wednesdays, fall back down on Fridays and peak again late on Saturdays and Sundays, that if we could smooth out activity in our hospitals we could make much better use of existing resources. There is a good deal that can be learned from overseas in that respect, and we hope to identify a few hospitals next year that are up for it, so to speak. That means changes in working practices and in the way things were always done to make better use of our facilities. Some hospitals will be chosen to take part in those type of projects.

When it comes to the new build, if there is a two-floor new build to replace the existing emergency department and put in an acute medical assessment unit, AMEU, and an ASU, which is what would be needed, we are talking about €30 million, and a six-storey building would cost about €60 million. It is a very substantial amount of money within a capital budget which only runs to 2016, but I will chase it up with the HSE to determine what is happening with the interim reconfiguring project.

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