Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue and welcome the opportunity to address the House.

While acknowledging that there are significant challenges in the provision of healthcare services in Limerick and the mid-west region, there has been and continues to be substantial investment in UL Hospitals Group. For example, in October 2022 the Minister for Health broke ground on a new 96-bed inpatient block project at UHL. This capital project will deliver a four-storey, 96-single-bed acute inpatient ward block and will go some way toward addressing capacity issues in the region.

In 2021, a new 60-bed modular ward block opened at UHL, and prior to that an extra 38 inpatient beds were provided at the hospital through two rapid-build projects, constructed in response to the Covid-19 emergency. There has also been investment across UL Hospitals Group, including the new injury unit at Ennis hospital, which opened last April, as well as a modern state-of-the-art ward complex, which opened at Croom orthopaedic hospital in 2021.

Separate from these initiatives, the Government approved in December 2022 the next stage of the enhanced provision of elective care programme. New national elective hospitals will be delivered in Cork, Dublin and Galway. No other locations are under consideration at this time. The locations were chosen to allow for new facilities of a size and scale to implement a national elective care programme that will tackle waiting times nationally.

These hospitals will provide significant additional capacity, enabling the separation of scheduled and unscheduled care. This will change how day cases, scheduled procedures, surgeries, scans and outpatient services are arranged across the country. These hospitals will ensure greater capacity in the future and help to address waiting times. This new delivery capability into the public healthcare system will benefit the whole population, including those who do not fall within the immediate traditional geographical catchment.

It is envisaged that the new Cork and Galway facilities combined will cater for up to 350,000 patients or procedures annually, which would include patients from the mid-west.

Complementary to the development of the new elective hospitals, the HSE also plans to develop surgical hubs in Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford and Dublin to provide a narrower scope of procedures. The HSE will work with hospital groups and forthcoming regional health areas to progress these proposals in the shorter term. An advantage of the surgical hubs is that they will be developed much quicker than the elective hospitals. This intervention will also support efforts to consider the necessary reforms and enablers needed to separate unscheduled and scheduled care pathways that will be required in the longer-term provision of the elective care programme.

A capital submission for the development of a 150-bed facility at St. John's Hospital has not been received. However, I assure the Deputy that the Department of Health continues to work closely with the HSE to ensure that UL Hospitals Group and, indeed, the mid-west are fully supported.

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