Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy has referred to the fact that we have been in government for several years. That is the case, but he cannot divorce where the health service is at from the economic catastrophe that befell the country for several of the early years when we were in government. Because of sound public finances we are now in a position to rebuild the public health service and increase capacity within it. There are 22 additional beds open today in St. Vincent's University Hospital, 29 in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, 17 in University Hospital Limerick and 30 in University Hospital Cork, with more to come on stream in the last quarter of 2018 and others early in 2019. We are recovering. We acknowledge that we need to do more to increase capacity, but the point the Taoiseach made was that in terms of the issues that were predictable in providing care in the period immediately after Christmas, we needed to make sure the HSE would manage the resources at its disposal in that critical period such that we would not have to deal with the consequences of having a backlog in emergency departments by having the appropriate quorum of critical staff - doctors and nurses - scheduled to work in that critical period.

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