Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank both Deputies for this. I fully appreciate where they are coming from in the context of how the people they represent are genuinely worried about going to the emergency department at University Hospital Limerick. I get that.

We have to do two things. We must continue to invest in Ennis Hospital. We have been investing in it year on year, we have expanded its opening hours, its urgent care capacity and its medical assessment unit capacity and we will continue to invest in it. At the same time, we must fix the emergency care situation in UHL. This is not a capacity issue; we were asked to invest additional capacity and we have done so. Some 192 beds are being built on site and we have already added many beds. Believe it or not, we have increased the staff in UHL by 1,000 in the lifetime of this Government. There has been vast investment but, unfortunately, that investment has not been mirrored with the requisite reforms, such as through the weekend discharge and the rostering of senior decision-makers - I do not refer to them being on call, but rostered - in the evenings and at the weekends. I refer also to the kind of co-operation we need between community care and acute care, such as that which we are seeing in other parts of the country.

I will finish on this point. I can assure the Deputies that we are we are building those 192 beds. Those beds will be staffed. We will continue with very significant investment, including the surgical hubs and more capacity to get the situation resolved.

I have the letter from the chief clinical officer and I did not read it out. I apologise to the Deputies. I will arrange for my Department to share the letter with the Deputies.

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