Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The State industrial relations machinery is at the disposal of the parties to the dispute. It is at the disposal of the nurses and their representatives as well as the management of the HSE.

I sincerely hope that if those mechanisms are used there will not be industrial action. It is to be hoped such a situation could be avoided with the use of industrial relations machinery.

On the Deputy's point on overcrowding in respect of emergency departments, the emergency department task force implementation group is co-chaired by the director general of the HSE and Mr. Liam Doran, the general secretary of the INMO. It has already implemented a range of measures and other measures to improve the situation are in train as we speak. The emergency department task force has provided funding for the opening of an additional 300 beds to allow patients in emergency department beds to move to other, more appropriate, units within the hospital and has provided significant funding for step-down facilities, in particular for older people who may need nursing home respite care or longer-term nursing home care.

As the Deputy knows, the waiting time for funding for the fair deal has dramatically and positively improved. Additional funding has been provided for the fair deal scheme-----

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