Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----as is Deputy McGrath, on the very important issues regarding both South Tipperary General Hospital and Our Lady's Hospital in Cashel. We are seeing progress on South Tipperary General Hospital. The 11 bays will open. They will provide badly needed additional surge capacity for the winter. We need to have a master plan for the development. Successive Governments have failed to invest in the hospital and, as a result, it does not have enough capacity. The master plan will enable the hospital group to say what it wants to do in Clonmel and ask the Government to include that in its capital plan. That is the way the process works, it is the appropriate way and I hope the hospital group does that because I would like to see this included in the capital plan.

The Deputy brought me to Our Lady's Hospital in Cashel, I was there with him and I think there is a possibility of alleviating pressure there. I am about to run out of time, but I have already asked the HSE to develop a proposal in this regard and it has developed a proposal which is particularly focused on the development of the Cashel health campus to deliver integrated care, particularly for older people. I think it could do an awful lot for older people in this regard. This will involve additional resource requirements, including specialist staffing, and I therefore expect this to be considered in the context of the budget.

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