Dee Ryan (Fianna Fail)

I join colleagues across the House in offering commiserations to Dr. Mansergh's family and recognise the significant contribution he made to Irish society and Irish life during the course of his career in the Civil Service, the Seanad, the Lower House and as a Minister of State. I echo the commiserations of my colleagues to his family.

I rise to ask the Leader if he will call on the Minister for Health to come to address the House at the earliest possible time on the issue of overcrowding at UHL. Just a number of hours ago, the long-anticipated HIQA report, which gives advice to the Minister for Health to inform decision-making on the design and delivery of urgent and emergency healthcare services in the mid-west, was published. It lays the facts out starkly for us and diagnoses the problem we have in the emergency department in UHL. Indeed, its findings are that we do not have an emergency department issue, rather an inpatient bed capacity issue in the mid-west. After that, the report makes two recommendations. In order to achieve the number of inpatient beds needed to support the emergency department at UHL, it is recommended the Minister that should devise an urgent, short-term plan to tackle the issue right now and to bring us up to the further 96 beds we will require by the end of this year to stand still. Beyond that, the report also makes three recommendations and options for consideration by the Minister to achieve the number of beds required to support a growing population to 2040, namely, either to develop and expand further at UHL in Limerick; to develop a second location, a co-located campus in Limerick akin to what they do in Galway in the Merlin Park University Hospital; or commission a model 3 hospital, which would have a second emergency department for the region. Will the Leader call on the Minister to come in here and debate this at her earliest possible convenience?