Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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43. To ask the Minister for Health for an update on his Department's engagements with the Health Service Executive to address overcrowding challenges at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35560/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Reducing Emergency Department overcrowding is a priority for me and for the Government. I convened the ED Taskforce in December 2014 to provide focus and momentum in dealing with the challenges this issue presents. The Director General of the HSE is co-chairing the ED Taskforce Implementation Group until March 2016. He has taken this decision in order to ensure that all relevant parts of the health services, including acute, social and primary care, are optimising resources in order to deal with the particular challenges associated with the winter months.

Based on the Task Force's Action Plan, additional funding of €74m was provided in April of this year. This funding has supported significant progress to date on reducing delayed discharges and lowering the waiting time for Fair Deal funding, as well as providing additional transitional care beds and home care packages to provide viable supports for those no longer needing acute hospital care. This additional funding came on top of measures already taken in Budget 2015, when the Government provided €25m to support services that provide alternatives to and relieve pressure on acute hospitals. In relation to bed capacity, further additional funding of €18m was provided in July for a winter initiative to include the provision of approximately 300 additional hospital beds. A further 116 hospital beds which have been closed for refurbishment or for infection control purposes during 2015 are also to be re-opened by the end of November.

Following the construction and commissioning of a modular unit at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Drogheda, an eight bay Clinical Decision Unit opened on 8 September, with a four bay Surgical Assessment Unit due to open shortly and 12 in-patient beds due to open by the end of November. The Clinical Decision Unit and Surgical Assessment Unit will allow the hospital to facilitate appropriate patient streaming, observation and treatment in a designated space, as well as reducing the pressure on the Emergency Department and the additional in-patient beds will further address the overcrowding challenges.

All of these actions are intended to enable the HSE to deliver my stated objective of reducing the number of delayed discharges by one third to less than 500 and the number of patients on trolleys in EDs waiting for admission for over nine hours to fewer than an average of 70.