Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Sinn Fein)
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628. To ask the Minister for Health if the HSE winter plan will be produced at an earlier stage for winter 2023-24; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3271/23]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The HSE Winter Plan for 2022-23 was published on the 11th of October 2022. The Plan is supporting acute and community services this winter to respond to anticipated high levels of emergency attendances and admissions across the acute sector, long waiting times in EDs and high occupancy rates across acute hospital settings. The plan is estimated to cost up to €169m to implement.

Key national initiatives of the Winter Plan 2022/23 include:

- The recruitment of 51 Emergency Medicine Consultants and associated support staff;

- The recruitment of an overall additional 608 WTE across the health system;

- Increased Community Intervention Teams, GP supports and Out of Hours services to reduce the need for attendances at EDs;

- Increased community services for mental health, disability and palliative care;

- Increase community and acute diagnostics; and

- Expansion of ambulance services, including the completion of nine Pathfinder teams and deployment of rapid handover teams to improve ambulance turnaround time.

Working for winter planning commenced in April 2022 and continued throughout summer 2022 with a series of meetings with the HSE in which it was stressed that the Plan must prepare the health system, as a whole, for the anticipated demands.

At my request, winter planning went beyond the national level this year. Instead, it adopts a bottom-up approach with bespoke local plans that seek to address hospital specific issues in conjunction with Community Healthcare Organisations.

In relation to the particular query raised regarding the 2023/24 Winter Plan, as this is a service matter, I have asked the Health Service Executive to respond to the Deputy directly, as soon as possible.