Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste's first comment was that there are plans. There is no shortage of plans. The difficulty is with implementation and follow-through. The plans get published and the Minister for Health does a tour of a hospital. He puts on a white coat like the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Murphy, puts on a hard hat for housing. Despite all the plans, 10,000 people aged over 75 spent longer than 24 hours on a trolley up until the end of August. Where were the plans for those people?

The Tánaiste spoke about the Minister for Health wanting to ensure community discharge and early discharge, yet there are not enough resources for home help hours or home care packages. Throughout the country people are being accepted and are eligible for home help packages but the local health services do not have the resources.

I will ask the Tánaiste the question again. The Minister for Health announced 600 extra beds during 2018 to address capacity issues. We are now in the middle of October 2018. How many of the 600 beds promised in one of the plans to which the Tánaiste adverted have been delivered? Given all the planning and, to use the Tánaiste's phrase, that this is predictable, can he give a guarantee today that we will not have a repeat of what we had last December and January in terms of a trolley crisis in our hospitals?

See this speech in context