Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also wish to bring up the issue of GPs. I do not know if anyone heard on "Morning Ireland" the doctor from Killarney who spoke with great clarity on the issue of GPs and, as Senator Ward said, about the GP visit card, etc. The challenge now is the GPs. We have people unable to access GPs out of hours. It is common all over the country in both rural and urban areas. This doctor made the point that it would pile up and pile up. That is a real issue and we need a debate on that issue.

In a number of the newspapers and in the media, people talked over the weekend in the lead-up to the budget about bed capacity in the hospital system. With all the additional funding, and I welcome any funding for medical services and developing the health system, we also must have efficiencies and value for money. We must have our theatres open for longer hours every day and we need a more slick and professional operation. Reading all the commentary over the weekend, I was struck by this issue of bed capacity. The professionals are telling us we do not have the bed capacity.

I travelled last week or the week before and I so happened to be sitting beside a surgeon in a Dublin hospital who told me a very strange story. He told me he is a vascular surgeon and when he has patients going to surgery, he has to check, particularly if they are critically unwell, if there are intensive care beds. We now have surgeons in hospitals checking minutes before people are going into surgery to see if they have capacity in terms of acute beds and, in the event of intensive care beds, specialist beds for cardiac and vascular surgery. We have a situation where at one point I was told 12 patients' procedures were cancelled that day and could not proceed having been prepped for, robed for and on the way to surgery. This is in our public health system.

Could we have the Minister back in to deal with two issues? The first is the issue of GPs that Senator Ward outlined well. That is a major concern. Could we have a special focus on that and the other issue about bed capacity? With additional resources which I welcome into the healthcare system, we must have capacity. Without the bed capacity, we cannot proceed to seriously tackle the issues of people who are waiting for critical, essential surgery in the public health service.