Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the Deputy's analysis of the problem. It still beggars belief that we reduced the number of hospital beds in this country long before the troika arrived in town. I believe we can do much more in community and in primary care. Even as we do that, there is a clear, compelling and indisputable case that we need to provide more acute hospital beds. There will be certain things we can never do in the community, even with all the investment we appropriately should make in general practice.

Against a background of growing demand for unscheduled care and high acute hospital occupancy rates, the Government provided €30 million in 2017 and a further €40 million in 2018 for measures to increase acute hospital capacity and alleviate overcrowding in emergency departments. Almost 50% of this funding was used to deliver home support packages and transitional care beds to reduce the incidence of delayed discharges. More than 200 beds have been opened this winter and more beds are due to come on stream later in the year. My colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, will undertake some work in the Department to ensure all elements of the health service are working together on late discharges.

Notwithstanding the increased level of resources provided, this winter has been particularly difficult for our health services, with emergency department attendances up 3.7% and admissions up 3.3% during the first quarter of the year. Despite the fact people in the health service are working extraordinarily hard and additional investment has been made, capacity to meet attendances needs to be put in place.

The situation was further exacerbated by Storm Emma and the severe weather that followed. In response to this, I allocated a further €5 million in emergency funding to provide additional home support packages and transitional care beds to assist the safe discharge of patients who required support to return home following the adverse weather.

11 o’clock

In light of the conclusions of the health service capacity review, raised at the Joint Committee on Health yesterday, that the system will need nearly 2,600 additional acute hospital beds by 2031 as a low-end figure even after we do all of the reforms that we need to do, I have asked my Department to work with the HSE to identify how we can front-load some of them. In other words, how we can put some of the reforms in place by the end of this year, and identify the location and the variety of build methods that could help to achieve that. The demographic pressures are very clear and we need to get on with delivering on the capacity review. I am pleased that it is now fully funded, but I now need to look at options to front-load it, because in the Deputy's part of the world, it is not good enough to tell University Hospital Limerick that it will be several years before a 96-bed ward block can be delivered. We need to see if there is an interim solution to put more beds into that facility.

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