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

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I do not need to imagine the scenario that Deputy McDonald speaks about. I am a doctor by profession. I worked in the public health service for seven years. I worked in three emergency departments and visited all of the other emergency departments during my time as Minister for Health so I fully understand what the experience of an overcrowded emergency department is for staff, patients and their families. I assure Deputy McDonald that we are making every effort to improve the situation.

There were a lot of patients on trolleys this morning. The figure is down to approximately 317 at the moment. We anticipate most of the remainder will be in beds by tonight. That still leaves us with a severe overcrowding problem in many of our hospitals. There are now approximately 11,000 beds in our acute hospitals. That figure has been increasing year on year since 2014. We are back to the number of beds we had in our hospitals approximately ten years ago, having reversed the cuts that began under a previous Administration. We have more doctors working in our public health service than ever before. We have 600 more nurses and midwives than we had this time last year. We have in recent years put in place more beds, nurses and doctors and we will continue to do so. This is happening against the backdrop of ever-increasing demand, which puts our health service under extraordinary pressure.

The Minister for Health met the chief executive of the HSE this afternoon and has been in contact with all of the chief executives of the hospital groups to see what more can be done, whether more beds can be opened and whether more funding for the fair deal scheme and home care - which has already been put in place - can help to get more patients out of hospital quickly. Deputy McDonald will know that an additional 1 million home help hours have been provided for in the budget and fair deal applications are now ticking over in about four weeks. We are also addressing the issue of care in the community to avoid people having to go into hospital in the first place. This ranges from encouraging more people to have the flu vaccine to better chronic care in the community so that people with diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, and other illnesses do not end up in hospital in the first place. We have signed a contract in recent months with general practitioners to enable exactly that.

Deputy McDonald specifically mentioned Limerick. I would say to the staff there that there is a new 60-bed block under construction. Once it has been completed, we will try to get the facility open as quickly as possible and hopefully that will relieve the overcrowding in that particular hospital.

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