Limerick East): There have been a number of investments over the past few years in the area of cardiac surgery.These have been concerned with supporting overall activity and with improving capacity in the public sector at the current adult cardiac centres at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital and Cork University Hospital.
Notwithstanding the additional investment in cardiac surgery facilities, waiting lists for adults have been increasing. The need to further improve facilities has been acknowledged and to deal with the immediate situation, I decided last year to use funding from the waiting list initiative to provide extra cardiac procedures. This was achieved by entering into contracts with private hospitals both here and in Northern Ireland to carry out the additional work.