Ryan O'Meara (Tipperary North, Fianna Fail)
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1558. To ask the Minister for Health if she has received the HIQA Report in relation to accident and emergency services in the mid-west region; when she intends to publicly publish this report; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [30189/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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HIQA wrote to me on May 28th to update on the timeline for completion of their final report regarding the review of hospital services in the Mid West region. This review will provide advice to me, as Minister for Health, to inform decision-making around the design and delivery of urgent and emergency healthcare services in the Mid West.

Overall, the HIQA work on the review of urgent and emergency healthcare services in the HSE Mid West region has progressed very well and the workstreams undertaken by HIQA to inform the advice are complete.

The completed workstreams include: review of the national policy landscape; analysis of relevant health system data; regulatory inspections of UHL and of other hospitals and services in the Mid West; substantial stakeholder engagement including a public consultation which received 1,121 submissions; a number of international evidence syntheses targeted to address relevant research questions have been undertaken.

However, a critical dependency for completion of the advice and a final report from HIQA is the input from the national and regional demand and capacity projections being undertaken by the ESRI for the Department.

HIQA have updated me that, given the ESRI regional capacity projections work will not be completed until later in the summer, this will impact on the timeframe for delivery of HIQA’s advice to me and the final report.

The revised timeline for completion of the HIQA final report will therefore be September 2025, contingent on the completion of the ESRI reports within the expected timeframe. The final report will be published.