Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thought it was a very useful report. I have a lot of numbers here as I got into a lot of the numbers comparing our baseline with the OECD figures in preparation for this morning. The situation is better than the OECD comparison suggests. I will explain why. There is no question that we have had a shortage of intensive care beds. We know they are needed for very sick patients and for scheduled surgeries. Not having enough of them can have a serious knock-on effect, particularly for the sickest patients or for those most in need of complex surgery.

When Covid-19 arrived, we had 258 beds. We are adding 92 to that, which will bring us up to 352. That is nearly a 30% increase which is very useful. That is phase 1 and it will be finished at the end of this year. Phase 2 brings us a lot further; there will be a further 106 beds, which will bring us up to 458 beds in total. That is a very big and much-needed increase. In fact, it goes beyond the 2018 capacity review. The Deputy will remember that a capacity review was completed following the Sláintecare report. The review stated that the correct number of beds for Ireland is 430. We are going beyond that to 458. We are going a good bit beyond what the capacity review said was required.

To answer the Deputy’s question as to how, if that is the case, Ireland is still well below the average in the OECD figures, the information I received is to treat the international comparison with care because some countries count neonatal intensive care units, paediatric beds and other types of beds that other countries do not count. It is, therefore, difficult to do a like-for-like comparison. I will comment further in my next response.

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