Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)
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327. To ask the Minister for Health if he will provide facilities to the acute hospitals that have not had major structural work undertaken in the past 30 years; his plans for these facilities; if he will refurbish, rebuild or replace the acute hospitals that need this work over the next 15 years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19450/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Information, where it is available, relates to structural works completed. Records of the capital grants paid to health boards or voluntary hospitals prior to 01/07/1994 are paper based and the files are archived. Also, prior to the establishment of the HSE, block capital grants were paid to the Health Boards and to the Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA) from its establishment for distribution as authorised to the hospitals in their areas. As the very high level data in the following table is available, it is not proposed to do the extensive search necessary to extract the requested data from the relevant archived files prior to 1996 as this exercise would require considerable staff resources.

The HSE will be requested to provide information on expenditure on acute hospital projects for the period since 2005 and to reply directly to you. If you have not received a reply from the HSE within 15 working days please contact my Private Office who will follow up.

In the short term the available resources are determined by the Estimates process whereby my Department is advised of its capital allocation for a rolling multi-annual five year period. There will always be more projects than can be funded by the Exchequer. Therefore any further investment in acute care must be considered in the context of the establishment of hospital groups, within the overall acute hospital sector infrastructure programme and within the multi-annual capital envelope available to the health service. There is limited funding available for new projects over the next multi-annual period 2015-2019 given the level of commitments and the costs to completion already in place. In addition, the HSE cannot exceed or plan to exceed its approved commitment thresholds. It is concentrating on applying thelimited funding available for capital works in the most effective way possible to meet acute care need now and in the future.