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

I acknowledge that our emergency departments, including children's emergency departments, are under a lot of pressure. The pressure is principally linked to a significant increase in the number of people affected by the respiratory syncytial virus, RSV, and the norovirus in recent days, with increased attendances by children with chest infections, the vomiting bug and so on. As a result, the children's hospitals will restrict elective access. Obviously, urgent operations will go ahead, but there will be restrictions on elective access until the number attending decreases. That is not unusual; it often happens during the winter period or when there is an outbreak of a virus. It is necessary to reduce overall demand on hospital services at a time when demand they experience increased demand because of a virus outbreak and for reasons of infection control. It is not a good idea to bring patients in for operations when a hospital is full of patients who have an infectious disease.

The Deputy will be aware that recent actions taken by the Government to deal with these kinds of issues include the expansion of the children's vaccines programme to include the rotavirus vaccine, for example. That vaccination will reduce attendances by children with the vomiting bug. The new urgent care centre and outpatient centre at Connolly Hospital has been opened. It provides additional capacity, which was not in place last winter. It is open on weekdays and we hope to extend its opening hours to weekends as soon as possible. The outpatient unit there has been open since July, with the result that in the past six months, more than 1,000 children were given consultant appointments that they would not otherwise have received. As a result, we have been able to reduce the waiting list for children awaiting an appointment with a paediatrician by 27% in the past six months.

I acknowledge that there is pressure on children's emergency departments as a result of the RSV and the rotavirus. The Deputy asked what the Government has done about it. We have extended the children's vaccine programme and provided additional capacity through the new centre at Connolly Hospital, which has helped to reduce waiting times for appointments with a paediatrician by almost 27% in only six months.

As the Deputy will be very aware, we have a new children's hospital that is very much under construction. It is now at roof level in certain points.

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