Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We know of the overcrowding in our emergency departments, to which Deputy Kelly referred. We know there is capacity issues in the public health system. We also know that to do deal with it, we need to invest in community care, primary care, home care packages, home helps and supporting people in the broader community. We do not need an Oireachtas committee strategy to tell us that is the way to go because there is consensus across the House and among service providers, public and private, that this is a requirement. We need to plan on a multi-annual basis in the key areas of the health services to ensure that we are not, on a continual basis in August or September, trying to winter proof our hospitals without having sufficient capacity in terms of home help hours, home care packages and high dependency packages, and equally the professionals to underpin those services. That is something that should be done very quickly by the HSE. It could complement the work of the Oireachtas committee because it could feed into our deliberations if we had access to some of the information and some of the HSE's thinking in terms of manpower requirements and strategic planning in the time ahead.

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