Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Colm Burke for raising this issue and for keeping in touch with me on these issues, particularly those in Cork.

The Deputy is correct that at a point in time we had to make sure we had access to every possible hospital bed in every possible setting for a wave or a surge which, thankfully, did not come in the way that it could have. That is thanks to the incredible efforts of the Irish people.

It is clear that we are going to require additional capacity for the foreseeable future, however. Even providing non-Covid care services is going to be much more difficult now. One will have to keep vacant beds in public hospitals. One cannot go back to having massive numbers of people on trolleys. Accordingly, we will have to keep some additional capacity. I have an open mind on how we arrange that. One could look to finesse or improve agreements in that regard. The Cabinet will consider this on Friday.

We have seen the relocation of a number of services from public hospitals to private. For example, with medical oncology services, there has been the relocation of day wards from St. Vincent's public to St. Vincent's private, Tullamore to the Hermitage, Waterford and Wexford to Whitfield and Kilkenny to Aut Even Hospital. Urgent surgical oncology services have moved from the Mater public to the Mater private, from Galway to the Galway Clinic, from St. James's to Blackrock and from Waterford to Whitfield. There are real benefits to non-Covid services which are now beginning to be ramped up.

This is the Deputy's point about how we make better use of that capacity now that we have the virus in a very different place to where it could have been.

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