Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I fully agree with the premise of the Deputy's question.

Before getting into what we are doing to speed it up, it is important to state that in spite of an extremely cumbersome process that leads us to being able to put new infrastructure in place, the Government has over the past three years expanded infrastructure, added critical care beds, diagnostics and primary care centres at a rate that has not been seen since, and likely long before, the HSE was founded. We need to give credit, dare I say, "to Government" for allocating the money, to all of the Oireachtas for supporting the allocation of that money, and to the Department and the HSE and their partners because there has been a substantial increase in infrastructure. Nonetheless, it takes far too long to build infrastructure in this country.

I am happy to be able to share that, working with the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Ministers, Deputies Michael McGrath and Donohoe, we have recently agreed some important changes. We have agreed that the limit where the public spending code - the public spending code being this extraordinarily detailed 17-step process - kicks in be moved from €100 million to €200 million. That means that most bed projects in the country will no longer have to go through the code. That will speed projects up.

Second, in the Deputy's own region and in the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's region, there is a massive investment planned for Galway. We are looking at putting in the eight-storey emergency department, ED, women's health block. The Deputy will be aware we are sanctioning detailed design now for the cancer centre for the region. We are looking at putting in place the new laboratories. We are looking at putting in place the new elective hospital. I am working with Government for these very large projects to reduce the number of steps required. The key number of steps required for many of these, the smaller projects, has been brought down from five to three and then we will be looking at the bigger projects to see how they can be accelerated as well.

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