Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I suppose I should be glad you are in the Chair tonight, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, or you would be adding your voice on this matter. I acknowledge the Saolta group as I am a resident who accesses the Saolta group. It is important to put that on the record.

I thank the Deputies for raising this important issue. The Saolta group serves a relatively older and dispersed rural population in Connacht and Ulster and is of vital importance to those communities. I should have said at the outset that I am replying on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly. The group has six hospitals across seven sites. Emergency department congestion, waiting times and other challenges vary across the group over time. There is significant capital investment in Saolta under way or in planning, which I will outline shortly. However, I acknowledge the scale of the challenge facing our emergency departments as we head into what is expected to be a difficult winter. I agree with Deputy Mairéad Farrell. I acknowledge and thank emergency department staff for their ongoing commitment to delivering a high standard of care to emergency department patients while acknowledging the distress that overcrowding causes to patients, their families and to front-line staff.

The Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, published the HSE winter preparedness plan for 2021-22 on 15 November. The plan centres on three core objectives - emergency department avoidance, patient flow and hospital egress - to mitigate the expected challenges in providing emergency care this winter while also continuing to respond to Covid-19. We are investing €77 million in this year's winter plan in addition to the 2021 funding, which has been retained. This year's winter plan recognises that a whole-system response is required and outlines how the HSE proposes to manage winter challenges across primary, community and acute care, including measures to allow the public system to access private healthcare capacity. The acute hospital capacity review identified the need for significant additional bed capacity.

Since January 2020 we have added approximately 800 new acute beds. Projects of note in Saolta hospitals include ten new beds in Mayo and 26 in Letterkenny, with a further 23 due before the end of the year. Portiuncula has two projects under way to provide 62 beds. In Sligo, there is the building oftwo additional 21-bed wards and in University Hospital Galway, 12 cardiothoracic beds are currently being built, as well as the new radiation oncology unit. The handover of the temporary emergency department in Galway is expected in early 2022, and Merlin Park's two new orthopaedic theatres will be operational shortly. Roscommon's specialist rehabilitation unit has been delayed due to Covid-19, but work continues to progress this project. These projects will provide the bed capacity to improve patient flow through the hospitals and improve emergency department performance.

I accept that our waiting lists are far too big. Many patients are waiting an unacceptably long period of time. The waiting lists were too long before the pandemic but have worsened due to Covid-19 and the cyberattack. We are taking action to address this. For 2022, an additional allocation of €250 million will be used to fund additional activity in both the public and private sectors to reduce hospital and community waiting lists. The additional funding means there will be a budget of €350 million available to support vital initiatives to improve access to acute hospitals and community health services.

There is an acknowledgement in the response, and I echo it, that there is tremendous pressure in all the hospitals across the Saolta group.

The staff are working incredibly hard, but my reading out tonight what beds have arrived and what beds are coming on stream does not provide the care to the families who need it and does not give the hospitals the staff they need. Funding is not the issue at the moment. It is really hard to recruit staff into clinical posts. That is a major problem being faced in Sligo.

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