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

I thank Deputy Lowry for raising this important issue. I appreciate that University Hospital Limerick is not just a hospital for Limerick, but for a whole region, including north Tipperary, Clare and the wider County Limerick. This morning, there were 21 patients on trolleys in Limerick. Eleven had been on trolleys for more than nine hours. That is a bad situation and is not acceptable at all. However, it is not the worst that it has been. We do see some evidence of some improvement in Limerick in the last few weeks. I acknowledge that and recognise the staff and management who have made some changes to make that happen over the last few weeks. I know that is no consolation to anyone who has had to wait on a hospital trolley for a bed.

As the Deputy mentioned, the HSE's performance management and improvement unit led an intensive engagement with the UHL team throughout the summer in response to concerns about conditions in the hospital and the findings of the HIQA report following its unannounced inspection of the emergency department in March. We accept that additional beds must be part of the solution. Some 150 additional beds have been provided in UHL since 2020, over the last two years, with 24 in the dedicated haematology and oncology unit, 14 single beds in a single-bed block, and an additional 60-bed block which opened in 2021. As Deputy Lowry mentioned, work has begun on an additional 96 beds in a new inpatient block at University Hospital Limerick. I believe the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, is breaking ground on that development today. The extra 96 beds for the hospital is a lot. It is a small hospital and will have an additional 96 beds in four storeys over the emergency department and renal dialysis unit. It will cost about €90 million. It will take two years to build and three months after that to commission.

We have to work with the hospital to do everything we can to improve the situation in the meantime. That is what the engagement with the performance management unit is all about. It does not just involve work with UHL but with other hospitals in the group and with community services to make sure that we avoid admissions and improve patient flow, so that people get through the hospital quicker and do not have to wait days to get a scan, when that scan might be enough to get them discharged. Regular, frequent assessment of patients reduces the number of long-stay patients waiting for a nursing home.

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