Hospital Facilities
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-09
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Martin Daly (FF), Roscommon-Galway

I thank the Minister very much. We had the excellent Professor Rose Anne Kenny, co-ordinator of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, TILDA, in recently with the health committee. She pointed out the demographic challenge we are facing in health. We are going to have 1 million people over the age of 65 by 2030 and a doubling of the number of those aged over 65 by 2057, to 1.6 million people. We have already seen this trend happening from 2013, with an increase from 569,000 to 806,000.
I bring these figures up because this challenge is looming. Obviously, beds are not a silver bullet, but they are going to be part of the overall way we manage health in future. We will probably start with proper screening programmes at the age of 50, with the whole population moving into better-resourced primary care, step-down beds and rehabilitation beds. I also support Deputy Seán Kyne’s call for the Minister to press for the 300 additional beds in UHG. This is a level 4 hospital operating with level 3 capacity.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-09