Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As ever with the Taoiseach's Government, it is a case of too little and too late. The middle of November is not the time to produce the winter emergency plan, with the greatest of respect to all involved. That work should have been done in the summer. The facts are that the mistake made at budget time, where not one additional acute inpatient or community bed beyond what had been previously committed to was budgeted for, has been repeated in the winter plan. Resources and money are not everything but if he speaks to anybody working in any hospital across the State, they will give him chapter and verse as to how stretched they are and refer to the fact that resources are lacking. We need more beds, including more acute beds and ICU capacity.

We also need the capital approvals process to be streamlined. The resources held back include, for example, 96 beds for Limerick, 50 beds for Sligo, 50 beds for Cork and I could go on and on. Similarly, on the recruitment process, would the Taoiseach believe me if I told him the average recruitment time for a consultant is 562 days? It is six months for a nurse. Hospital managers across the State know this is ludicrous. This is a bureaucratic nightmare; Orwellian in its proportions.

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