Hospital Facilities
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-09
============================================================

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire

I agree, particularly concerning rehab beds, step-down beds and neurorehab beds. I was in Blarney with Deputy Colm Burke to look at the neurorehab step-down beds in Mercy University Hospital. It was quite creatively done. It was a former hotel on a golf course that was acquired and redesigned for this purpose.
We really are trying to be imaginative and innovative about where we can acquire space to be able to provide beds of every kind. I was in Tallaght University Hospital yesterday, where existing space has been found within the hospital to be repurposed for beds. I have been in hospitals where there are plans to turn records rooms, where patient records have been stored, into beds. Hospital managers are being creative where they can be at the moment, but none of those things are going to equate to the scale of the number of beds we need. We need this significant capital programme, which I hope I have outlined. I do really recognise the challenge.

---

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