Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I agree with all that. We have a beds plan and a hospital building plan so the multi-annual bits and pieces are in place, and we also have the community care plan. The enhanced community care programme is the multi-annual plan and is really going from strength to strength. I am opening another three primary care centres tomorrow. That is going really well. We have community care, beds and hospitals. Diagnostics is going very well. The GP access to diagnostics programme did more than a quarter of a million scans last year. Essentially, now via the GP, we are providing free access to all diagnostics for everybody regardless of whether someone has a medical card or GP card. It is going really well. We are using a lot of private capacity for that so this is an area where we can definitely look at building further public capacity. The final piece of the jigsaw is a multi-annual workforce approach. We are involved in a European project on that and that work is being done through this year. Ultimately, what would be great is a single piece of paper that brings it all together and gives a five- or ten-year capacity plan in respect of community care, acute care, workforce and infrastructure.

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