Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am very sorry to hear that lady's operation was cancelled. It must be particularly distressing if a patient is travelling a long distance or if he or she has been psyched up for a procedure or has to fast for a prolonged period. What the Deputy mentioned does happen. Operations are regularly cancelled, unfortunately, where overcrowding occurs in hospitals. That is done for good reasons. The Deputy mentioned that overcrowding in hospitals can have an impact on mortality and morbidity, and that is why elective operations are cancelled far too frequently.

With regard to the solution, first, bed capacity must be increased. An extra 250 beds were put into the system in the last year alone. We have proposals now to develop elective hospitals that do not have emergency departments so they do not get overwhelmed on a busy day and operations do not get cancelled. We have a bit of that already with Cappagh hospital and some other hospitals-----

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