It is fair to say that, in the decades prior to 2000 when the national development plan was announced, the health care system did not receive the capital investment it required. Therefore, many of the hospitals had no serious investment for up to 20 or 30 years. In this respect, I include hospitals such as St. Vincent's Hospital, the Mater, and the Cork and Galway hospitals. The first task was to prioritise between acute and non-acute categories. We were endeavouring to obtain a 50:50 split in the national development plan so that the non-acute category would cover day care centres, health care, primary care, community care and continuing care. As the design teams worked on these major projects and dug deeper, the costs increased in some instances. However, we had to modernise the hospitals. This was agreed to by all owing to the condition of some of the hospitals prior to the developments in question. Some of them had no serious investment.
A range of projects are taking place that cost less than €10 million. There has been significant investment in Waterford Regional Hospital, as the Deputy knows, and in Kilkenny hospital. I was in Kilkenny recently and noted that the hospital has up to ten or 11 new facilities. Significant investment has been made in Wexford General Hospital even prior to the plan, and design teams have been appointed in respect of projects at that hospital. Many of the initiatives predated the Hanly report.
The projects in the major teaching hospitals are of a significant level given the scale of those hospitals in any event. Galway will serve the entire western seaboard for tertiary items, such as radiotherapy and heart surgery, which means people from the west will no longer have to go to Dublin for heart surgery and radiotherapy in the future and for a range of other services such as renal services, some areas of orthopaedics and other specialities. As a result of the investment in Galway, we will now be able to provide services in the regions.