Vol. 545 No. 5
33 Mr. J. Mitchell asked the Minister for Health and Children the number of additional staff he plans to employ in the health services in 2002 to provide services and support to the 650 additional public beds he plans to bring into the system. [30923/01]
The service planning process for 2002, including determination of additional staff required, will get seriously under way in each health board and in the Eastern Regional Health Authority area after the letter of determination for 2002 issues from my Department. Letters of determination will issue once the full detail of funding available for health services in 2002 is formally announced in the budget. In regard to the 450 additional beds planned for the public system in 2002, due to the variety of arrangements planned by health boards and hospitals my Department is not in a position to estimate the staffing requirements with any precision at this time. My Department will communicate further with the Deputy when the staffing requirements for 2002 have been agreed.
Does the Minister agree that this is tantamount to telling the House he does not know if his promise to provide 650 extra beds next year, 200 of which will come from the private sector, will be effective? Will he confirm that more than 90 beds are available in Longford-Westmeath General Hospital in Mullingar and that he recently informed Deputy McGrath by letter that those beds would not come on stream until 2007? It is a nonsense to publish plans saying that more beds are to be provided when the Minister has no idea of the number of staff required to make those beds available.
Obviously, I cannot reveal the contents of the budget to be presented to the House shortly. Discussion of Longford-Westmeath General Hospital is completely erroneous. It is not a matter of 90 beds lying idle in Longford-Westmeath. The building is a shell. One cannot walk in there and put in 90 beds.
The Minister will not put them in.
It is necessary to install electricity and plumbing first.
That will not happen until 2007, seven years from now.
I sanctioned phase 2B, which represents an historic investment in Longford-Westmeath General Hospital of up to £60 million. That is a huge investment and the Deputy should not knock it or try to undermine it. It is a very well deserved investment for the people of Longford and Westmeath. A major project like this cannot be completed in six months. Regarding the 650 beds, we invited proposals from the health boards as to what they could do in the short-term to increase bed capacity. They came back to us with those proposals, some of which will involve additional staffing and some of which may not. It is a reconfiguration of existing operations within hospitals. The health boards informed us that they can achieve the additional capacity over the next 12 months.
A sum in the region of £40 million has been spent on the hospital in Mullingar. Will the Minister confirm that a letter, signed by him, was sent in recent weeks to Deputy McGrath stating that the beds would not be available until 2007? Is it not a total charade to suggest that a health strategy exists given that the Minister has no idea what staff will be available next year to commission those extra beds?
In fairness to the House, we should acknowledge that massive projects of the type I have sanctioned in Longford-Westmeath cannot be carried out overnight.
Is the Minister confirming the letter?
The letter deals with the full project. If the Deputy looked at the letter he would see that it deals with what is going to happen next year, the year after and in the third year in terms of additional capacity coming on stream. If the Deputy were to travel all over the country he would find that the investment made by this Government means that there is not a single hospital which is not receiving major capital investment, refurbishment and modernisation. The hospitals infrastructure did not receive that kind of investment for a long time for a variety of reasons, irrespective of who was in power. Over the last number of years we have been sanctioning projects and commissioning work which will, in time, transform the quality and the environment of our acute hospitals system. No one can take from that. That will certainly happen in Mullingar because of the need which exists there.
I did not hear the Minister. Is he confirming that he told Deputy McGrath that the beds will not be available until 2007?
I gave a detailed reply to Deputy McGrath which dealt with what is going to happen stage by stage between now and 2007.
The Minister said 2007.
Progress in relation to the acute services in south Tipperary has been extremely slow and part of the development of the Noonan plan, as it is now known, has not been put in place, particularly at Cashel. When does the Minister intend to visit the area to see at first hand what is happening there? He was there in June last year when he promised that various things would happen which have not yet happened.
When I last visited Clonmel, construction work was to be seen all around at the hospital there. Part of the logistical difficulty there is that the Government decided to put such a huge investment into the hospital. I announced phase 2 again last year as the Deputy knows.
The Minister announced it several times.
When I was there the scaffolding was up and the workers were on the ground. The hospital, which was very much in need of modernisation and refurbishment, certainly required the kind of investment we made. The Government, to a large extent through its Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, has provided the capital to enable that to happen.
