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

I propose to take Questions Nos. 22 to 29, inclusive, together.

The Cabinet committee on health is due to meet on 13 February. In addition to the meetings of the full Cabinet and of Cabinet committees, I meet Ministers on an individual basis to focus on different issues.

I met with the Minister for Health and HSE leadership team just before Christmas to discuss the pressures being experienced across our hospitals, particularly in emergency departments around the country. This pressure resulted from an exceptionally high level of three respiratory viruses in circulation in the community, namely influenza, Covid-19 and RSV. The current challenges facing the health service have also been discussed at meetings of the full Cabinet each week, including a memo today brought by the Minister on emergency department overcrowding.

While trolley numbers have fallen significantly since the start of the month, the number of patients on trolleys is still unacceptable and much higher than we would like. Every effort is being made to bring about further reductions over the coming weeks.

Budget 2023 provides the highest allocation of funding for health and social care in the history of the State. It is designed to facilitate better access to affordable, high-quality healthcare and further advance our ambition to achieve universal health care for all, as set out in the Sláintecare plan. We are committed to continuing to expand the core capacity of our acute hospitals, with more health professionals and more acute hospital beds. We have almost 1,000 more acute hospital beds than we had just three years ago and 6,500 more doctors and nurses.

We are also reforming how and where we provide services. The enhanced community care programme continues to develop healthcare at a more local level. Work is progressing on the establishment of six new regional health areas and elective care centres in Dublin, Cork and Galway, as well as surgical hubs in the interim.

On the Cabinet committee on Covid-19, the national response to the Covid-19 pandemic has evolved from an emergency approach to one which is appropriately mainstreamed and targeted at mitigating the severe impacts of Covid-19 on the population. Consequently, responsibility for Covid-19 now falls within the remit of the Cabinet committee on health.

On the State's handling of Covid-19, a comprehensive evaluation of how the country managed Covid-19 will provide an opportunity to learn lessons from our experiences in dealing with the pandemic, something that is being done in other countries. It will help to ensure that we are in a better and stronger position if and when another pandemic or another similar type of health emergency befalls us. It is intended to establish this in 2023.

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