Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

A well-resourced winter plan is meaningful action but we need to continue to increase the permanent capacity of the healthcare system and build up resilience in the system. It is the case that we are faced with an unprecedented number of presentations. In our children's hospitals, according to reports in the news yesterday, there has been, I think, a 50% increase in presentations relative to 2019, which is extraordinary. In our acute adult hospitals we are seeing more older people and people who are more frail and sicker presenting. This underlines the need for us to continue to increase capacity. We have added over 900 new acute hospital beds, 73 sub-acute beds and over 340 acute beds since coming into Government. We have increased staffing in the public health service by 15,000 people in the past two and a half years and we have brought about a reduction of 40% in the number of people waiting for home care. The problem we have is human resources and the availability of people-----

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