Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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A design team was appointed by the HSE in September 2022 to progress the proposal for a 96-bed medical ward block at Wexford General Hospital. Capital Plan 2023 has allocated funding to take the proposal to detailed design stage.

A Strategic Assessment Report (SAR) for this proposal has also been completed. Under the March 2023 Public Spending Code (PSC) update, the SAR will be subsumed into the Preliminary Business Case (PBC) and will form a single SAR/PBC document. The work undertaken to date on the SAR will be leveraged to progress the proposal in the form of a SAR/ PBC for Stage 1 of the shortened PSC process.

The update to the PSC increased the thresholds for the classification of major projects at which full PSC scrutiny is required and reduced the number of steps for proposals to travel through before approval to proceed. These PSC updates have the potential to speed up the delivery of capital projects including the proposal for Wexford General Hospital. In line with the updated PSC, this process for the Wexford proposal will be managed through the HSE capital development process rather than requiring direct submission to the Department or Government for consent.

The Capital Plan 2023 also provides a commitment to explore opportunities to accelerate provision of bed capacity in 2023.

Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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779. To ask the Minister for Health in which quarter of which year he expects the new 96-bed block currently under construction in UHL to be opened. [26278/23]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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As the Health Service Executive is responsible for the delivery of public healthcare infrastructure projects, I have asked the HSE to respond to you directly in relation to this matter.