Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Donnelly for the question. I welcome that there is now a political consensus in this House that we need more acute hospital beds. That was not the practice in the past, even during the previous economic boom where, and I do not mean this in a party political sense, there was a view, even within senior levels of health service management, that we had too many hospital beds in this country. Clearly, that myth has been dispelled.

We have fully funded the 2,600 beds, which is ultimately the recommendation. I take the Deputy's point because the bed capacity review does talk about lots of different figures, but it does recommend that this is the figure that would be used if a programme of reform were to be put in place also. When I talk to people across the health service and look at the document that the cross-party group, the Sláintecare committee, produced, it does say "Yes" to more hospital beds but it also says to move more into the community. If we put all our attention on a hospital-centric model, we will be lulled into a false sense of security in not needing to move more services into the community.

It is important to say also that we are not just talking about the 2,600 acute hospital beds. We are also talking about the elective only hospitals which will provide about 600 further beds, which creates more capacity, and about 4,500 social care beds, which provide transitional care opportunities. I agree that we need to front-load now and we need to look at the opportunities to get some of these beds in now, because whether it is 2,500 or a different figure, the health service cannot wait a significant period to get those beds. I will discuss with Government colleagues in the coming weeks and months how we can front-load some of those beds, be it by modular build or another form.

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