Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. I will return to the numbers. The PA report does not recommend 2,600 beds. What it says is, given their assumptions, the lowest conceivable number of beds we would need is 2,600. It makes various technical assumptions, some of which are incorrect. The 2,600 assumes massive investment in primary care and post-acute care and 2,600 beds. The Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, estimates the figure is 7,000. The Irish Hospital Consultants Association believes that we are short more than 2,600 beds today. Between the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, the IMO, the ESRI and the Department of Health, no one is saying we need 2,600 beds. That has now been hardwired into the capital plan, so the Minister would appear to be providing for what his own report describes as an extreme in terms of the least possible number of beds we would need.

Is the Minister prepared to go back to the Department and to PA Consulting, if needed, and ask them, in light of the fact we have provided in the capital plan a certain amount of money for 2,600 beds, how much money would be needed if various reforms do not happen? The PA Consulting report, for example, assumes a one-to-one transfer between acute beds and primary beds. For every primary care bed that is put in the community, one less bed is needed in the acute system. Many experts say that is not a realistic assumption. It would be useful for us, as we move to implement Sláintecare, to say that while we have provided for 2,600 beds at a cost of several hundreds of millions or billions of euros, the midpoint is 4,900 beds and for that we would need an additional sum, €2 billion or whatever, that we have not provided for.

Would the Minister be able to come back to the House and the committee to provide that information to us?

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