Kieran O'Donnell (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. The accident and emergency department at University Hospital Limerick is the busiest in the country. By the end of the year approximately 64,000 patients will have presented in the department. Since 2014, the number of people presenting has gone from approximately 55,000 to the expected approximately 64,000 this calendar year. One can compare this with Cork University Hospital, which has seen slightly fewer people presenting this current year, with the figure of approximately 60,000. Cork University Hospital has 800 beds, which is double the number of beds in University Hospital Limerick, which has 400.

Reconfiguration occurred in 2009, with the full-time accident and emergency departments at Ennis, Nenagh and St. John's Hospital closing, meaning 18 beds were eliminated, as they had six beds apiece. All patients were then put into University Hospital Limerick, which had only another 17 bays in the accident and emergency department. There was a loss of 50 beds at Ennis, Nenagh and St. John's Hospital as well. There is an urgent need for 96 acute beds to be provided at University Hospital Limerick as a result. This proposal has been submitted and it is in the Health Service Executive, HSE, national capital plan. I am asking for it to be fast-tracked and that the Minister, Deputy Harris, would allow seed money to be provided to the HSE national estates to allow design work to get under way to build facilities for these 96 urgently-needed acute beds.

We have a new state-of-the-art accident and emergency department, which will be opened in May 2017, but that is only one piece of the jigsaw. The other piece is the building of the facilities for the 96 acute beds that are urgently required. They can be fast-tracked, even structurally, on the basis that we currently have a dialysis unit that has been operational since last Monday. It is in a single-storey building and beside it there is a critical care block, which is a four-storey building with the new accident and emergency department on the ground floor and critical care units above it. We can build the facilities for the 96 accident and emergency beds above the dialysis unit, making it a four-storey building, with 24 beds per floor.

I ask the Minister, Deputy Harris, to facilitate two actions. The first is that seed money could be provided to University Hospital Limerick and the HSE national estates to allow design work to get under way for the 96 acute beds that are urgently required. When the capital review occurs in 2017, I ask that this project to provide the 96 beds be funded. More immediately, I would like an update on the winter plans in place to cater for the accident and emergency departments. Many people in Limerick have contacted me as the scenes in the emergency department now are chaotic. The Minister, Deputy Harris, has seen this and the department in Limerick is continuously under pressure. It is not fit for purpose but until the new department opens in May 2017, we need emergency measures put in place to ensure we can deal with the deviation. The second action relates to progressing the facilities at which the 96 acute beds will be provided. That is a two-stage process. The first is to give the seed money to allow the design work to get under way. The second is for it to be funded and included in the mid-term capital review plan for 2017. The project will cost €25 million. The accident and emergency department at University Hospital Limerick has more patients going through it than any other hospital in the country but it only has 400 beds. The hospital in Cork - literally down the road from University Hospital Limerick - has slightly fewer admissions, approximately 60,000. We have approximately 64,000 and yet the hospital in Cork has double the number of beds, 800. We need equity for University Hospital Limerick.