Hospital Overcrowding Dail Éireann — 2024-06-13 ============================================================ Gino Kenny (PBP), Dublin Mid-West I accept that there has been progress in this regard. However, especially at bank holiday weekends, there seems to be a spike in the number of people who cannot get a hospital bed. The figure of 404 or whatever the actual figure is, is too many. We have the situation of hospital beds in the Irish public health system, which is a legacy issue. We all agree there needs to be more bed capacity in Irish hospitals. Since the 1980s and 1990s, there has been a serious reduction in the number of hospital beds per head of population. The recruitment freeze is having an effect on morale because if people want to access the public health system, the capacity is not there at this time. I would like to hear the Minister's views on this --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-06-13/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:04+00:00 Sitting date: 2024-06-13