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 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. A very significant allocation of €78.2 million has been provided by Government from 2021 to 2023 to fund additional 94 beds in Phase 1 of the Strategic Plan to bring funded capacity to 352 critical care beds.

Today, there are 330 Critical Care beds in place, an increase of 72 beds. The remaining beds in Phase 1 are due for delivery once fit-out and recruitment processes are completed.

To give perspective to the 72-bed increase achieved since 2020, the nett number of additional beds delivered from 2013 to 2020 was 21, according to the census carried out by the National Clinical Programme in Critical Care.

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.

As the determination of costs for critical care is a service matter, I have asked the Health Service Executive to respond to the deputy directly, as soon as possible.