Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is welcome. I thank him for taking this Commencement matter. I received correspondence from the Department of Health last night to suggest that no Minister or Minister of State was available and I understand that. I thank the Minister of State for stepping in at the last minute.

I will address the issue of surgical hubs. For those who do not know, they are located on the sites of Mount Carmel Community Hospital in south Dublin, Swords Business Park in north Dublin, Merlin Park University Hospital in Galway, Cork University Hospital, CUH, in Cork, University Hospital Waterford, UHW, in Waterford and also in Limerick.

Before continuing, I will take this opportunity, given that the Minister of State is a Limerick man and did great work on the Mayor of Limerick election, to congratulate John Moran on his amazing success. He deserves to be acknowledged. I thank the Minister of State for his work on the directly elected mayor for Limerick. Well done to all involved.

There is a proposal to have one of these surgical hubs in Limerick. A planning application was lodged for the development of the hub at the former Scoil Carmel. I do not know what the status of that is and I ask the Minister of State to address it. I would also like him to address Mount Carmel. These surgical hubs are excellent. Their primary focus is to deal with relatively simple procedures, perhaps not day cases, but most likely it will be to address day cases, and get moving on the massive backlogs in surgery. I welcome that and the proposals for Mount Carmel. Will the Minister of State fill us in on those? There is also a proposal for a surgical hub in Swords Business Park. The people there want and need one as the area is growing rapidly. Hubs will be interchangeable. People with particular needs may be directed to another hub. They are not necessarily servicing the immediate community, but the greater part of the greater strategy of need. I welcome that.

Planning permission for the hub at Merlin Park Hospital was granted so the tendering process is now the issue. People, including Fine Gael public representatives at council level as well as TDs and Senators, are asking what is the status of the tender process.Then there is the issue of the planning application lodged for the CUH and the enabling works for that site. Again, there is uncertainty. Where is all that going? I will conclude by talking about Waterford. A planning application was lodged for a hub in Waterford, which I welcome. I looked at the application yesterday. HSE estates seeks to establish a surgical hub that will comprise four operation theatres, and procedure rooms are included in the scheme. Morning and afternoon sessions are envisaged with 150 patients accessing the facility daily. That is very impressive. A maximum of 100 staff will be employed at the hub and it seeks to provide 311 car parking spaces to facilitate moving to this hub. Again, that is impressive and I acknowledge the enormous work my Independent colleague, Deputy Shanahan, has put in here and the work of others to push this forward.

I commend the Government on these six exciting surgical hubs, which are badly needed. I also commend the Minister for Health and all those involved, including the project managers and teams, but we need to get through the planning processes and the tendering processes and have timelines and deadlines for construction and completion. This is a really good news story but I do not want us to be here in six or 12 months asking where we are on this. They need to be proactively pushed forward. I am interested to hear what the Minister of State has to say.