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

I appreciate that a huge number of Deputies have asked important questions. I jotted them down as quickly as I could. Eighteen Deputies asking three questions each comes to nearly 60 questions. I will try to answer as many as I can as best I can in the time available. Deputy Dillon raised the issue of the emergency department in Castlebar, which needs to be extended. I agree with his remarks on that. I am not sure if it can be fast-tracked but I am working with the Ministers, Deputies Donnelly and Donohoe, to see if there are particular health projects that we could fast-track, especially those involving expanding EDs or additional bed capacity. There are a number of similar projects in the west region. On Friday, I was in Portiuncula University Hospital in Ballinasloe. I visited the hospital and the emergency department. It is a good ED but it is really small for one that takes 30,000 patients every year. It also needs an expansion. It is good to see the additional 50-bed block and 12-bed additional isolation ward are under construction.

On the urgent care centre in Connolly, Deputy Paul Donnelly and I share a constituency. He will know, as I do, that it is a really good facility and has been a big addition to paediatric healthcare in the area. It has dramatically improved the experience of urgent care for children in west Dublin, Meath and north Kildare. The same goes for the centre in Tallaght. There is a new online booking system. It has been brought in because of a massive increase in the number of attendances, way beyond what was ever intended. It is for a trial period. I do not know if it will work or not. I did not particularly like it when I heard about it. It is a decision it has taken for a trial period. It may work for some people. They might have a kid with a high temperature or minor injury and they would rather get an appointment in three hours than sit in the waiting room for three hours. It might work for some people but I take the point that the Deputy made about people who are digitally excluded and who might not be used to using computers. It may have the perverse or unintended effect of just increasing attendances in Temple Street down the road, which we want to avoid. We will see how it goes. If it works, it works, and if it does not, it does not.

Should I continue?

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