Hospital Facilities Dail Éireann — 2026-07-09 ============================================================ Martin Daly (FF), Roscommon-Galway I accept that answer and I thank the Minister very much for that update. It is important because people sometimes equate healthcare with hospital beds, but that is not reality. In isolation, beds cannot provide for the healthcare needs of the public. We will never develop enough capacity in beds unless we change the way we manage healthcare, both in preventative and in primary care. We really do have to step up the number of rehabilitation beds, step-down beds, home care packages, primary care therapies and nursing home beds in the community. We also need to think more strategically about how we manage the health of the population from the age of 50 onwards. Professor Rose Anne Kenny made that very point to the health committee. Deputy Sherlock already pointed out this challenge because we both listened to Professor Kenny's excellent presentation at the health committee last week. --- 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/2026-07-09/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-09