Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are a few issues there which I will cover. First, there is an acknowledged deficit in the number of beds. The Deputy will be aware that, two weeks ago, we launched the new business plan, which includes 3,500 beds on top of the 1,200 that have already been opened. This Government will either have opened, have under construction, or now have fully committed to, on a site-by-site basis, almost 5,000 extra hospital beds. This is a transformative number of beds. As the Deputy quite rightly says, we have to staff them. The new development funding has been put in place. New posts are being created for the new beds, so the hiring embargo is not affecting our ability to open the new beds. It is putting our healthcare workers and services under pressure in other ways, but not when it comes to the beds.

The other thing we must keep the focus on when it comes to getting our emergency departments to where they need to be is reform. We are putting in place very significant extra capacity and have been doing so for a few years. The hospitals that are winning, those that are reporting no trolleys or a very small numbers of trolleys, are those that have embraced a different way of managing patient care. We need all hospitals to be doing that.

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