First, I welcome our guests to the Gallery. Hello again. Today is a good day for healthcare and for people in Ireland. I came at speed to the Chamber from a launch of the new beds plan. We all agree it has been needed. Today we launched a plan for an additional 3,500 hospital beds. Everyone will welcome that over the next seven years. We have 1,200 beds open, another 440 under construction and we now have thousands more coming next year and the following years. It will make a big difference and it will be on a bala…

Healthcare for everyone is a cornerstone of a decent society. I am pleased to report to the Dáil today on the progress being made in making this a reality. If you need a doctor, nurse or therapist; if you need a simple procedure or a complex operation; if you need home care or a nursing home, it cannot matter how much money you have, where you live or what age you are. Thanks to four strong years of investment from this Government, thanks to a plan to increase capacity while modernising and reform how care is deliv…

There is an exemption. They are in disability services.

Let us talk offline.

I thank the Deputy. On the pay and numbers strategy, that has been authorised, so there should be no issue with it being published. It comes to a little over 1,800 new posts and we are seeking mechanisms to fully roll out safe staffing through agency conversion as well. The net impact will be about 2,300 staff and more staff will be announced as part of the additional €92 million new development funding towards the end of the year. There will be no issue with publishing the pay and numbers strategy. With regard to …

The context for this is important. The Deputy quite rightly referred to the increase in healthcare demand. We have had an unprecedented increase in the number of healthcare workers as well. There has been a pretty extraordinary 24% increase in our health and social care workforce in the lifetime of this Government, or nearly 29,000 more healthcare professionals working in the health services than there were at the start of this Government. It is nearly 10,000 more nurses and midwives, more than 4,000 health and soc…

The embargo is simply a mechanism that was required for an organisation that was hiring staff it had no money or sanction to hire. If a school principal started hiring teachers he or she had no money to hire, the school would be told immediately to stop hiring because it had no sanction to hire the teachers and no funding had been allocated for their salaries. The school would be told it simply needed-----

-----to stop hiring teachers, and it is the same in this case. Unfortunately, we had a deeply frustrating situation where the HSE had hired thousands of people. The central controls within the HSE failed. The HSE, as soon as it saw it was coming anywhere near its funded target for the year, should have identified that. Had it done that, no such measure would have been required. I fully acknowledge the frustration for our front-line workers. I meet them every week and hear their frustrations, and we are working to r…

I thank the Deputy for his question and acknowledge his ongoing work in this area, both in terms of the MCAP initially and the evolution of the programme. As he will be aware, we launched the medical cannabis access programme in 2021 for three conditions initially: refractory epilepsy, spasticity as a result of MS and nausea from chemotherapy. Since the inception of the programme, 55 separate patients have availed of it - 52 adults and three minors, mainly for spasticity associated with MS. There were 38 patients i…

I accept the Deputy's position. It is a smaller number of people. We know from the clinicians that in many cases they are nervous about prescribing, even though the MCAP is in place for the unlicensed products. As I said, we will do a clinical review of the HRB findings. I am very open to expanding the programme. We will be led by the clinical view on this. What is interesting though is that while I take the Deputy's point that there are only 55 patients, which is a low number, we are seeing a much higher number no…

I take the Deputy's point. I think that is all very fair. We have now a pathway to address exactly those issues. I will ask my officials to bear all of that in mind. The unit dealing with this will take note of our interaction this morning. The first question is whether we expand from the three conditions. I am very open to that. Second, what we need to do is engage with the clinical community as well and ask even if we do expand, whether clinicians are still nervous of prescribing under MCAP versus licensed produc…

I join the Deputy in offering my condolences to Aoife's family and friends. I met her mum and dad at the start of the year and offered my apologies as well as condolences because she was failed and she should not have died. It is heartbreaking. The answer to the challenge of overcrowding in the emergency department in UHL is capacity and reform. We have made sure that UHL is the hospital that has had the biggest increase in money and staff in the country. It has had a bigger increase in budget and staff than any ot…

I agree. The reconfiguration was not done right at all and the measures that the Government is putting in place should have been put in place before the reconfiguration happened. That is my view. What I can stand over is what the Government is doing. The Government has added a level of capacity into Limerick that has never been done before and there is no hospital in the country that has had more money or staff. The increase in staffing in UHL in the lifetime of this Government is nearly 1,200. It is vast. The beds…

Sorry, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

Let us bear in mind that when I say we have added more staff, we have increased the staff by more than 40%. This is not a few more staff. An additional 433 nurses, for example, are working in the hospital. It has been a vast increase. In terms of a model 3 hospital, we should never rule anything out. The chief executive and I have asked all six of the regional executive officers, now that we are moving to regional health areas, to conduct a strategic review of their regions in terms of community care and hospital c…

I thank the Deputy for the question. I acknowledge that the waiting lists for these children are simply too long and that while more capacity is being is being added and more surgeries are being done, there are a number of children for whom the wait is simply unacceptable. In 2022, I asked Children's Health Ireland to come up with a comprehensive plan that would mean that of the children who are scheduled and actively waiting for surgery, no child would be waiting more than four months. CHI devised a plan and I fun…

I can. We had a useful session yesterday. I might organise a briefing for members of the health committee who are interested as well. There is a lot of important work under way. As to the treatment abroad scheme or whatever it might be, we have been very clear with CHI in saying if it can find what our surgeons say is clinically appropriate care for the children, be that in Boston's hospital or the UK, Germany where it was done before, Stockholm or indeed anywhere, this Government will fund it. CHI has been given a…

I do not disagree with any of that. The families are angry and they have every right to be angry. There is no defending what has happened. We have to fix it and fix it permanently. That is what this dedicated spinal unit is going to do. The team in CHI are meeting other international providers this week. I have told them that as far as I am concerned they have full authority to go and secure this on behalf of the children. On the second opinion, I will get a more detailed note but I understand the families who were…

Great news, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 5 and 22 together. I thank Deputies Kenny and Collins for raising this matter. On the back of their questions I engaged with my officials and the HSE on this. As per the questions, they are accepting there are shortages affecting the child development checks in Dublin south and Dublin west. The public health nurse service is experiencing significant shortages in Dublin south and west and the HSE has said recruitment is especially challenging. It has advised the local services is wor…