Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Marcella Corcoran Kennedy, to the House and was pleased that the Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, was present in the House earlier today. It is important to have senior departmental representatives here to discuss the health of the nation.

One of the key points made earlier in the debate was the fact that we have not built a new hospital in Ireland since 1998. In that year, the population was approximately 3.7 million. Today we have a population of 4.5 million and according to demographic profiling going forward, our population will increase by a further 1 million in the next 20 years. This means that planning our health service for the next 20 years and beyond will be very challenging. Major investment in hospitals and health infrastructure, including human resources, will be required. We must think outside the box and determine where such investment is needed. In my view, we will be looking at building new hospitals in places like Limerick, Cork and Galway. That will pose a very significant challenge for Government, whatever its make-up. We also need to put a funding strategy in place to fund this investment.

In my part of the country, the last new hospital to be built was Cork University Hospital, CUH, which opened in 1976, the year I was born. There has been no change in the intervening period. We must look at where we will put the new infrastructure. This involves working with the local authorities and local people to ensure that any new hospital will be capable of dealing with projected population growth and will be built in an appropriate location. We must develop a 20-year strategy for the development of our health infrastructure. One of the biggest challenges will be to find the best locations. If one looks at Cork, it has the potential to increase its population by 200,000 to 300,000 people over the next 20 years. A housing estate being developed in Carrigaline at the moment will have 1,800 houses it on completion. We need to have the infrastructure following such developments and that will be a core issue in terms of planning.

Cork has the largest waiting list for gynaecological services in the country. I attended a meeting with the Minister and every consultant in the maternity hospital three weeks ago and the statistics we were provided with were frightening. Action is required on this and many other issues. The Minister gave a commitment to revert to us on this and I hope he will give us a date for when he will provide the details of the review of what is happening in this area. At the moment, 50% of Ireland's gynaecological list is in one hospital in Cork. That is mismanagement and should never have happened. We must deliver on these major key issues.

Going forward, the biggest issue is that there will be an additional 1 million people in Ireland in the next 20 years. We must have a plan, going forward, so we can deliver core hospital infrastructure in every major urban centre in the country. That will be the real challenge for this Government and the next three or four governments that follow.