Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The Strategic Plan for Critical Care, which I brought to Cabinet in December 2020, aims to provide for long term increases in critical care capacity to meet current and future needs. The increases provided for in the Strategic Plan exceed the recommendations of the 2018 Health Service Capacity Review, which had set out a requirement for 430 critical care beds by 2031.

Before the pandemic, there were 258 adult critical care beds. Very significant funding of €78.2 million has been provided by Government since 2021 to add an additional 94 beds in Phase 1 of the Strategic Plan to bring funded capacity to 352 critical care beds.

Today, there are 329 Critical Care beds in place, an increase of 71 beds. The remaining beds are due for delivery once fit-out and recruitment processes are completed.

Phase 2 of the Strategic Plan will provide further critical care capacity with developments at five priority sites and will exceed the number of critical care beds numbers recommended by the Health Service Capacity Review.

The following data is included in the annual National Audit of Critical Care Capacity and Activity Census (2013-2021) and HSE data (2022-2023).

Capacity in private hospitals is a matter for the individual private hospitals themselves. The Minister for Health does not have a role to play in relation to critical care capacity in private facilities.