Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The short answer is "Yes, and a consolidated plan". I fully agree. The Deputy and I have discussed this several times. We already have several multi-annual plans in place. The core infrastructural plan is the 2018 capacity review, which gives us targets, agreed by everyone in the House, for acute beds, critical care beds, nursing home beds, elective capacity and so forth. The Deputy will be aware that we are reviewing the 2018 capacity review. It probably underestimates fairly significantly the number needed. The Deputy will be aware that the report gives us a range of acute beds, from approximately 2,500 to approximately 7,500. We all latched onto the figure of 2,500 beds but the reality is that we need more, based on the 2016 baseline.

Coming up to Covid, we were on track for the annual increase in beds called for in the 2018 review. We are now well ahead of that. The Deputy will be aware that I am seeking Government agreement on an additional 1,500 beds. Since Covid arrived, we have added 970 beds. The plan is to bring the figure up to 1,179 by the end of the year. The addition of 1,500 beds represents a massive increase in hospital capacity.

Intensive care unit, ICU, provision is also going very well. At the end of this year, we will have seen a substantial increase. We have had a substantial increase but we should have more than 350 ICU beds by the end of this year. This will make a big difference. We are going much further. Again, the plan is to exceed the figures in the 2018 review.

The three elective hospitals go way beyond what the 2018 capacity review put in place. We have a multi-annual plan for infrastructure and it is being reviewed. I believe the targets will increase. We are in a good place regarding most of the targets. We probably need a broad political discussion on nursing home beds. The commission on care will be examining this also, determining how we can keep people at home.

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