Second, Senator Mullen, without any irony, is setting himself up today as a defender of women’s rights. He is no champion of women’s rights. He has sought for years to control women. He has sought to control them through the Constitution, he has sought to control them through legislation, and he sought to control them through dogma. He has an obsession with controlling their reproductive health and people’s sexuality. He contends you cannot get married if you are a gay man or woman. Apparently, you should not be al…

This debate is wandering all over the place at this point.

The debate is just wandering aimlessly. The Senator is filibustering.

I have been listening. I do not want that. I want you to stop talking nonsense.

I thank the Deputy for the question and for his advocacy in this area. I have discussed this issue with him. Deputy Devlin is Chair of the all-party Oireachtas committee. We met with Diabetes Ireland before last year's budget. I assure the Deputy that this is a matter of great priority for the Government. There are various things we have done in the past few years. One is, in line with a request from Diabetes Ireland, that we are setting up the national diabetes register. We have not had one before. We began rollin…

I thank the Deputy. The technology is not cheap. The cost of one sensor is about €1,500 to €3,000 per year. They are expensive and, hence, the additional cost to the State would be €200 million to €400 million. If the Deputy is comfortable with sending me on details of the case or if his constituent is happy to send them on, I will take a look specifically at what he is saying he had access to and now does not have access to. I would be concerned if there are patients who were eligible and who, for some bureaucrati…

I thank the Deputy. I took another look into the current state of play when I received the question in preparation for this morning. The figures are as follows. There are 36 public or voluntary hospitals, 33 of which now charge €10 or less for parking. The Deputy quite rightly points to the figure of €15, which certainly can be a lot for parking, particularly for someone who is already dealing with the pressures and difficulties of having to be in a hospital in the first place. The good news is that only three hosp…

I thank the Deputy. In nine hospitals, car parking is free. We have a bunch which charge up to €10 and then we have those three hospitals to which I referred. The latter will, understandably, tell us that this is all well and good but they need money to make it up. It is reasonable for them to state that there would be a funding shortfall in the context of the provision of healthcare services if the fees were lower. This is something we can certainly look at. We can run the numbers on what it would cost these three…

I thought it was a very useful report. I have a lot of numbers here as I got into a lot of the numbers comparing our baseline with the OECD figures in preparation for this morning. The situation is better than the OECD comparison suggests. I will explain why. There is no question that we have had a shortage of intensive care beds. We know they are needed for very sick patients and for scheduled surgeries. Not having enough of them can have a serious knock-on effect, particularly for the sickest patients or for thos…

I have been looking at the ratios. The OECD average is 12 beds per 100,000. When neonatal units, paediatric beds and level 1 beds are included, we get to approximately 11 beds per 100,000. It actually goes way up. For whatever reason, however, we do not count all of them in our OECD submission. We are going on the baseline, that is, the 2018 baseline set out in the report which examined what was needed in Ireland, and we are exceeding it. As to the Deputy’s point on highly skilled staff, I could not agree more. In …

I wish it were simple.

While this is an issue, it is not an issue in all of our hospitals. In the context of some hospitals, the cost of living in the local area is much lower and rents and house prices are much more affordable. However, as Deputy Kenny has said, in some parts of the country, it really is an issue for someone on, say, an ICU staff salary, whether that is an ICU nurse or ICU healthcare assistant. It can be difficult. There is no question about that. The good news is that we are significantly increasing our nursing graduat…

On the day in question, the HSE figure was 401 patients between those in emergency departments and those in the wards. Regardless of whether we use the INMO figure or the HSE figure, both are still far too high. I met the emergency department task force earlier this week. There is a new approach we put in place last year. Many emergency departments, many patients and their families, and many of our staff are still under very significant pressure. However, I do want to acknowledge that our healthcare workers are get…

There are a few issues there which I will cover. First, there is an acknowledged deficit in the number of beds. The Deputy will be aware that, two weeks ago, we launched the new business plan, which includes 3,500 beds on top of the 1,200 that have already been opened. This Government will either have opened, have under construction, or now have fully committed to, on a site-by-site basis, almost 5,000 extra hospital beds. This is a transformative number of beds. As the Deputy quite rightly says, we have to staff t…

For years the INMO has been calling for an extra 5,000 beds, and we are adding nearly 5,000 beds. I did not see the glowing press release from the INMO welcoming all of this, but its members and doctors across the country whom I talk to are very happy with the new beds plan, partly because of the scale of it. It is beyond what people were expecting. People are expecting about 1,500 beds and it is 3,500. Also, we have done this on a regionally balanced basis. In the mid-west, for example, where UHL is, when this Gov…

I want to make sure I am addressing the correct question.

The number of nurses in our health service has been increasing dramatically in the lifetime of this Government. Since January 2020, right across the health service we have increased the number by almost 29,000 whole-time equivalents. It really has been a huge increase. Deputy Murphy asked specifically about nurses and midwifery. In the lifetime of this Government, the nursing and midwifery workforce has grown by nearly 10,000. This has been much needed and they are doing huge work. A 10,000-person increase in nursi…

I thank the Deputy. I fully agree, and we had a debate with his colleague Deputy Smith recently on exactly this. There are parts of the country where they have found it very difficult to recruit or replace public health nurses. It is not something that can be allowed to stand. Public health nurses are doing essential work with infants and with older people. We cannot have babies for whom the developmental checks are being missed. We cannot have mums and dads who cannot avail of the supports for their babies that th…

I acknowledge the Deputy's ongoing advocacy and work in the Oireachtas on this issue. From a policy perspective, I want to take a very open approach to medicinal cannabis-based products. We want to make sure it is safe for patients, obviously, and we will always follow the clinical advice. Within that, I have told the Department and the HSE that there should be no idea of shutting these products down because they are cannabis-based. Let us follow the evidence and let us do what is best for patients. On the initiati…

Yes.