Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. I mean no disrespect to the Minister of State, but I thought that the Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, would have a response as well. I note that the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, has announced that it will include the national children's hospital in its daily Trolley Watch and started doing so at the beginning of the year. For the first two weeks at the beginning of the year the INMO counted 23 children on trolleys. This must be a focus for the Government again.

Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Crumlin went over budget by €500,000 last year. It has clearly not been getting the resources that it requires, and a lot of that money is spent on agency staff because of the moratorium and its effects. Some 2,818 more children attended the ED in 2017, but the capacity levels in the hospital have only now returned to 2012 figures. There is a significant increase in our child population, and in the last decade many more births were recorded in Ireland. We are not matching capacity to the birth rate and the increase in population. We are doing an absolute disservice to our children.