Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will finish on this point. As I have said, capacity is part of the answer. Reform is the other part. There has not been a patient on a trolley at University Hospital Waterford in more than three years. In hospitals such as those in Portlaoise and Tullamore, the number of patients on trolleys is consistently very low. Why? It is because they roster differently. They provide access to senior decision-makers in a different way and manage patient flow differently. They engage with the nursing home sector and with private hospitals differently. They are doing things in ways that speed up access for patients. We need to continue to invest, and we will, but we also have to see best practice, which we know is working in some areas, in use consistently across the country. We know what the answers to this are and we know that our healthcare professionals and hospital managers want to make use of them so we have to give them the supports they need. If we do that, if we continue to grow capacity, community care and integrated care and, critically, if we reform how care is delivered to patients, which will include providing much more access to discharge over the weekends, this is something we can consign to history.