Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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10. To ask the Minister for Health if he has received requests for increased capital spending to alleviate the ongoing serious overcrowding and delays in accident and emergency departments; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40408/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Last December, I convened the ED Taskforce to provide focus and momentum in dealing with the challenges presented by ED overcrowding and significant progress has been made to date.

As mentioned previously, HSE figures are showing a 8% reduction in overcrowding this November compared to last. The INMO figures are also showing significant improvement in the second half of November. This contrasts with the position back in August when overcrowding was 40% up compared to August last year. Recent progress is definitely in the right direction and a big improvement on the start of the year when there were 500 to 600 people on trolleys. This Wednesday morning's TrolleyGar report showed 303 patients waiting on trolleys at 8am, with 117 of those patients waiting over 9 hours. The comparable figures for the same day last year were 409 patients on trolleys with 204 waiting over 9 hours, a drop of 26%.

Additional funding of €117 million has been provided in 2015 to relieve pressures on acute hospitals. This includes €74 million provided in April which has supported significant progress to date on reducing delayed discharges freeing up just over 250 beds in our Acute Hospitals and lowering the waiting time for Fair Deal funding, as well as providing additional transitional care beds and home care packages to provide supports for those no longer needing acute hospital care.

The HSE began its winter planning process early this year. In July, following consideration of proposals from hospitals to increase capacity, a further €18 million was provided to support the acute hospital system over the winter period by providing additional bed capacity and other initiatives to support access to care. This additional funding included €8 million capital funding which allows for renovation and reopening of wards, opening of additional acute beds, isolation rooms, rehabilitation beds and transitional care beds.

There has been considerable capital investment in the upgrading and reconfiguration of Emergency Departments in recent years including:

- a new ED in Wexford General Hospital and St Luke's General Hospital Kilkenny;

- a new ED and acute medical assessment unit in the Mater, which opened in 2013

- construction of a new ED underway in Limerick University Hospital, to be completed in 2016;

- newly refurbished and expanded adult ED and provision of a short stay observation unit in the paediatric ED at Tallaght;

- upgrade to South Tipperary General Hospital to provide additional treatment spaces;

- refurbishment of the ED at Our Lady's Hospital in Navan and

- refurbishment of the ED at Mullingar, providing improved facilities for care, to be finished in January 2016.

Beaumont Hospital is also undertaking a feasibility study on the location, size and cost of building a new ED at the hospital and a report on this is expected shortly. All of these investments are intended to improve the experience of the thousands of people attending our Emergency Departments every day.