When I was Minister for Education and Science, I decided to seek involvement in the first public private partnership in education and it delivered five secondary schools in a most expeditious and efficient manner. Those schools are now open and people should visit them to see their high specification. When the opportunity came up to try a pilot health project under the public private partnership initiative under the NDP, I decided again to have a go and see if we could involve help, particularly in the context of community nursing units.
The ESRI will be advising that public private partnerships should continue to form part of the overall infrastructural agenda for the next five years for efficiency purposes, from design to completion of building. In the initial phase there is a lot of work involved with public procurement and the EU. I accept that can be protracted but there is now an official in the Department who focuses on that and does nothing else, and a review of the processing of PPPs is under way. The traditional procurement process is ongoing for other community nursing units.
We have a particular problem in the two regions from which the PPPs have come in terms of historical under-provision of community nursing units. The judgment is that if we can successfully execute these PPPs, we will bring on board a significant number of beds in key areas where there has been under-provision leading to problems in accident and emergency wards in the eastern region, overcrowding and the long stay situation in Dublin hospitals.
Deputy Ó Caoláin's question relates to a separate issue, acute beds. We have commissioned over 560 beds as a result of the bed capacity initiative, even though the health strategy called for 450, with another 200 in the private sector. The treatment purchase fund spending has introduced a further 200 on a rolling basis since its introduction and more than 7,000 patients have been treated under that scheme.