Results 12,581-12,600 of 49,836 for speaker:Stephen Donnelly

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: I am working on expediting as much of this as possible. As I said, we are putting a package of infrastructure investment in place for CUH. It is the biggest hospital in the country. It needs a level of investment it has not had in a significant time. The Deputy will be aware that Mercy University Hospital has had some recent invest and is doing well with it. I fully acknowledge the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: We have some good news on that. We are in the final phases of discussions between the HSE and providers to do a few important things, which are: to ensure that everyone is paid at least the living wage; that they are paid for the time they are travelling between different homes; and that their travel expenses are covered. That should make a big difference. The Deputy will be aware that an...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: I will ask Mr. McCallion to provide some of the operational details. First, however, it is completely unacceptable, regardless of the context, for any of our healthcare workers to be assaulted or abused. We must have a zero-tolerance approach. We all know patients and their families can end up in distressing situations. I fully acknowledge that, but it is never acceptable for our...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: I acknowledge that in some parts of the country, the GP out-of-hours services are struggling to provide the kind of response times people want. It is also important to say that in other parts of the country, an excellent service is being provided. I met some of the GP out-of-hours providers at the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, conference the weekend before last. They asked me to convene...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: It is going really well. I opened three primary care centres last Friday. We now have 167 primary care centres around the country. There are a lot more in construction, with more to be opened. There are 13 centres in construction, with another five in advanced planning and 29 in early planning. There are many primary care centres. As the Deputy stated and as colleagues will be aware,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: There is a lot of anecdotal evidence. We have some reviews. For example, the Irish College of General Practitioners has done a review of GP access to diagnostics which shows that a very high number of those people would have ended up in accident and emergency departments instead of ending up back with their GPs. Anecdotally, I can tell the Deputy that patients are saying that they no...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: I acknowledge and appreciate the Deputy's adequate warning. Let us find a resolution to this before whatever dire events the Deputy alludes to might unfold. Can I suggest this? The Deputy has advocated for this for some time. The Deputy and I have discussed the matter previously. I acknowledge that the system can probably be improved. A lot of the time, the patients and the people...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: I ask the Cathaoirleach to allow me time to respond on this important issue of Naas General Hospital. It is interesting that the Deputy has asked the question today. Earlier this week I had discussions with several Deputies who raised concerns in respect of Naas. In essence, they are saying there is a concern locally that there is some secret plan to downgrade the hospital. That is the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: That decision was made long before my time but I can provide my view, for what little that might be worth. My sense is that the sequencing could have been done differently. In other words, the changes were made and additional capacity was promised. My view is that the additional capacity should be put in place first. The Deputy will be aware that I intervened in Navan and Drogheda and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: I acknowledge the Deputy's ongoing advocacy for significant investment in Ennis hospital. The very clear clinical advice that I have, and that my predecessors had, would not point towards reopening an ED in Ennis. Regardless of my view, the Deputy's view or anyone's view, the very clear clinical advice is that the consolidation of emergency care to the bigger hospitals was important in...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: Regarding University Hospital Limerick, there are many good people doing their best with historically insufficient capacity in terms of beds, theatres and staffing. We are working on that. I have been clear with the hospital that changes are needed in how patients are cared for there. I am not sure the Deputy was present for it, but I cited the example of University Hospital Waterford,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: I fully agree with that. They are working hard and have immense challenges. There has been a gap in terms of capacity. The Government, the HSE and my Department are working very hard to increase investment significantly while also insisting that the patient flow within the hospital be improved. That is the reality. I sent in a specialist team to examine the matter. The hospital has made...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: We will take a look at it. I thank Deputy Crowe.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Senator. I will get him the exact figures. Much progress is being made. When Covid arrived, we had 258 critical care beds. This is below the international levels that we would expect Ireland to be at. We all saw the deficit exposed by Covid. We should acknowledge the quite extraordinary response by our critical care teams across the country. I do not want to take up the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: There will be five centres of excellence where an awful lot more critical care capacity is provided.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: We will have 352 by the end of this year. We will go on from that. What total are we going for?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: Some 446.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: We will have gone from 258 up to 446. We are now getting the kind of critical care capacity that the country really needs.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: I will ask Mr. Tierney to speak on Galway specifically. I asked a few things. That included going to five areas very quickly. They would ideally not need environmental impact assessments. We would use rapid builds. The NHS, for example, is dropping these in all over the UK. We are looking at a similar approach. There are different timescales for the five regions, depending on local...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Challenges in Hospitals: Minister for Health (26 Apr 2023)

Stephen Donnelly: There are no overnight beds for day care.