Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the question. I was delighted yesterday to secure Government agreement on both those elective hospitals. I know Deputy Connolly has tabled a question on the Galway one.

It is worth spending a moment to reflect on what a difference these hospitals will make. The Cork hospital, which, as Deputy Burke will be aware, will be at Sarsfield Court, will have nine operating theatres, a number of outpatient clinics and a lot of diagnostics facilities. It will employ more than 300 staff. Critically, because it will be an elective hospital, patients and clinicians will know that when patients are scheduled, those surgeries, procedures, appointments and scans will happen and will not be pushed out by emergencies coming through the emergency department. There will be about 180,000 healthcare events in the hospital in any given year, about 44,000 day-case and minor operations, about 23,000 endoscopy procedures and about 76,000 outpatient diagnostics and treatments. That is equivalent to about 600 patients a day, every day, and will make a major difference.

The question Deputy Burke poses is exactly the one I have been posing. We are working on it and it has taken time to get to where we are now. Unfortunately, that is because of the public spending code. There are, I think, 17 steps involved. I was looking this up this morning in preparation for these questions. There are 15, 16 or 17 steps. It takes a very long time. We know this was put in place after the national children's hospital cost overrun in order that we could manage the risks in respect of cost. The plan is that we would have the two hospitals in Cork and Galway open with patients in them by the end of 2027, five years from now. As part of the agreement yesterday, I have requested, and the Government has agreed, that my Department and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform work together to find additional opportunities to speed the process up.

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