Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is a plan. The winter initiative is the plan to increase capacity in general hospital beds and to increase ICU capacity but primarily it is more preventative to prevent people going into hospital in the first place. We then have the community diagnostic hubs and stronger primary care resources all of which are provided for in the winter initiative. In addition, there are 4.7 million extra home care packages and hours, all of which are designed to try to keep capacity in our hospitals to allow for elective procedures such as coronary care and cancer surgeries and to ensure that this time around we can try to protect those services as much as we possibly can if Covid-19 intensifies, and the Covid case numbers are growing. We cannot deny that. We cannot go into denial either because Covid will impact on hospital services. Unfortunately, that is a reality that we cannot deny.

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