David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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388. To ask the Minister for Health the estimated cost of reducing injury unit charges to €50. [30398/24]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Injury Units (IU’s) play a key role in providing unscheduled emergency care for patients with non-life threatening or limb threatening injuries, as conveniently as possible, while ensuring patient safety and equitable standards of care within an Emergency Care Network.

There has been a steady increase in attendances at IU’s year on year as outlined below (Table 1). Between January and May 2024, there was an 11% increase in IU attendances compared to the same period last year.

Table 1. – Injury Unit activity 2021-2023

*This data is taken from the HSE’s Management Data Report (MDR) and is provisional and subject to change.

It should be noted that there is no charge for people attending IU’s who either have a medical card or a GP referral letter.

In 2023, a review of all Injury Units was undertaken by a HSE Working Group. This group made a series of recommendations to improve the functionality of Injury Units for patients. This report was adopted by the HSE EMT and has been shared with my Department.

Two recommendations emerging from the 2023 National Review of IUs were:

1) to expand geographical coverage and prioritise locations for the provision of Injury Units, and

2) to expand all existing acute hospital governed IUs to operate from 8am to 8pm.

I provided resources under the NSP 2024 to standardise all IU’s to open from 8am to 8pm by Q3 2024. In addition, I requested the HSE to develop an implementation plan for the IU expansion programme. This work is currently under way.

As the cost of reducing injury unit charges is not currently under consideration the information requested by the Deputy is not available at this time.

David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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389. To ask the Minister for Health the estimated cost of removing car parking charges for patients. [30399/24]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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As this is a service matter, I have asked the Health Service Executive to respond to the Deputy directly, as soon as possible.