Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 14 Feb 2023

Vol. 1033 No. 3

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions

Deputy Mary Lou McDonald

Rents have soared to unaffordable levels in the decade that Fine Gael has been in power. The latest daft.ie report is a nightmare read for workers and families caught in the private rental trap. The report shows that new rents across the State increased by nearly 14% in 2022. All counties bar one saw double-digit increases. Some of these increases are frightening: County Mayo, up 21%; County Roscommon, up 20%; and County Galway, up 19.4%. The average rent now stands at a staggering €1,733 a month. Here, in Dublin, it is even worse, with tenants paying on average €2,293 per month. These are extortionate sums and there is worse to tell of. Apartments blocks are being built now where the asking rents will be even higher. Indeed, in my constituency there are three-bedroom apartments newly built where people are being asked to fork out nearly €4,000 a month in rent. That is €48,000 a year just for rent.

Meanwhile, what people are being offered for their hard-earned money is beyond a joke: €625 per month for a bunk bed in a room with three other people, which is the one I am showing the Taoiseach; €1,880 per month for a room the size of a parking space where you pull your bed down, which is the one I am now showing the Taoiseach; and €1,100 per month for a bedroom, use of the kitchen and a utility room, but the rest of the house, which is in County Kildare, is off limits, which is the one I am now showing the Taoiseach. This is soul-destroying stuff.

The rent crisis has had a devastating impact on the lives of an entire generation. People in their late 30s and 40s are stuck in house shares because they cannot afford to rent a place of their own. Young people are unable to move out of their parents' homes because they have not a chance of renting. So many are financially crippled by years of paying these rack-rents and are faced with the choice of moving back in with mam and dad or emigrating for their shot at a better life in another country. At the sharpest end of this crisis, thousands of families face losing the roof over their heads when the eviction ban expires in April. This is all happening because Government housing policy is failing.

Week after week, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael come in here and gaslight Ireland’s renters by telling them that their housing plan is working, but how they can make that claim to people who hand over the lion's share of their income on rent and who then see the rest of their income gobbled up by sky-high energy bills, childcare fees and grocery bills is beyond me.

Renting in Ireland means your life and aspirations are on hold. You wonder when the next rip-off hike is going to happen or when the landlord might tell you to get out. It is no way to live.

Léiríonn géarchéim na gcíosanna atá ag éirí níos measa teip polasaí tithíochta an Rialtais. Ní mór don Rialtas gníomhú anois chun cíosóirí a chosaint. Ciallaíonn sé sin cosc a chur ar arduithe cíosa agus cosc ar díbirt a shíneadh amach. Renters are now at breaking point and it is the job of the Government to protect them. I am asking the Taoiseach to do three things: first, to legislate urgently to ban rent increases for three years; second, to deliver a meaningful cut in rents by putting a month’s rent back to into tenants’ pocket through a refundable tax credit; and, third, to extend the ban on evictions until the end of the year.

The Taoiseach

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta as a ceist. Is é Tithíocht do Chách an plean atá againn chun úinéireacht tí a chur i bhfeidhm, a chinntiú go bhfuil rochtain ag gach duine tithíocht ar ard-chaighdeán chun cobhsaíocht a thabhairt do chíosóirí, agus chun daoine atá i mbaol a bheith gan dídean a chosaint. Is cuid dár gcultúr agus dár stair í úinéireacht tí. Ní féidir linn glacadh leis nach mbeidh daoine in ann a gcéad teach a cheannach go mbeidh siad greamaithe i laincis cíosa.

At the outset, I thank the Deputy for her question. As she knows, Housing for All is our plan. It is all about making sure people have a secure home and, ideally, a home that they own if they wish to become a homeowner. Rents in Ireland are very high and a lot of people are struggling to pay the rent and everyone on this side of the House acknowledges this. It hits hardest on people who are moving out of home for the first time, people who are returning to Ireland - about 30,000 people return to Ireland every year - as well as people who are new to the country having come here to work in our public and private sectors. The Government is acting to help. We are helping in four ways that are significant. First, there is a rent tax credit of €500 per renter, €1,000 for a couple, and €1,500 for three people sharing. We have had 170,000 applications already for this rent tax credit. We encourage people who have not applied to do so. It will cover a few weeks' rent for a lot of people and one month's rent in some cases. I hope it is something we can build on in future budgets.

Cost rental, which has been talked about for a long time and was initiated by the last Government, has been made a reality under this Government. It provides cost rental housing that people can rent with secure tenancies at a much lower rent than the market rent. We want to scale that up over the coming years and we intend to do exactly that.

There are rent pressure zones, which most renters are covered by, meaning rent increases are between 0% and 2% per year. The daft.ie report, to which the Deputy referred, shows that rents rose by about 3.8% for existing tenants - the vast majority of tenants - in the past year. This is much lower than the figure of 13.7%, which only refers to new-to-market tenancies.

In addition, the Government is helping people to buy, which is the most significant thing in my mind because we want people to become the owners of their own homes. About 70% of people in Ireland own their own home. I would like to see that figure much higher. That figure is certainly nowhere near that high for younger people. It is probably around half that figure. That is why we want to see more people buying their own home and that is why we are helping. There is the help-to-buy scheme where people get two years' of their income tax back so they can buy their own home. That is a scheme that Sinn Féin promised to take away for first-time buyers. We now have the first home scheme for people who can get a mortgage but do not have enough to buy the house. That gap can be bridged through the first home scheme, something which Sinn Féin has promised to take away if it gets into government. That is why we need to make sure these schemes stay in place.

Deputy Mary Lou McDonald

I have just set out what is the reality for so many people.

This is now beyond crisis mode. People are paying €640 per month for a bunk bed sharing with three other people in a small bedroom. That is four people in one room. Where does this end? Where does this stop? At what point does reality dawn and do we see the necessary actions? The Taoiseach has set out what the Government has done under its plan, Housing for All. It is not working; ask any renter or anyone out there who lives in the real world and they will tell him the magnitude of his failure because they live it every single day.

I put it to the Taoiseach again that he needs to do three things. First, he needs to effectively cut rent by putting a month's rent back in every renter's pocket by means of a refundable tax credit. Second, he needs to ensure there are no further rent hikes. The rent pressure zones are not delivering that at all. Third, and I would like him to address this point in particular, the eviction ban must be extended to the end of the year. If it is not extended, not alone will we have these still soaring, disgraceful, rack-rents, but we will have a further surge in homeless which would be an intolerable situation.

The Taoiseach

We are acting on this. Just in the past few weeks, we have introduced rent tax credits at €500 per renter, €1,000 for a couple, three people sharing getting €1,500 and four people sharing getting €2,000. That is going to help people in a meaningful way with their rent costs. That is something I believe we can build on in future budgets if the public finances allow. We are also making a reality of cost-rental housing. This is something talked about for a very long time and it is now a real option for people to be able to rent securely and pay a rent that is much lower than the market rent. We need to scale that up big time over the years ahead. We are doing exactly that using the Land Development Agency, LDA, in particular, and we have the rent pressure zones. Most tenants in Ireland are covered by rent pressure zones now. These are sitting tenants and as we know from the daft.ie report, rents rose for sitting tenants by approximately 3.8% last year which is very different from what is the case for new-to-market properties. The only way we can deal with the very high rents for new-to-market properties is by increasing supply, and that means standing up to politicians and parties who oppose new developments, often opposing them specifically because they are for rent-----

Deputy Brian Stanley

A Fine Gael culture.

The Taoiseach

-----or include too many one-beds or might accommodate, to use a term Sinn Féin likes to use, "transient" tenants.

Deputy Mary Lou McDonald

It costs €4,000 to rent on Carnlough Road in Cabra. The Taoiseach needs to come off it. He needs to get a grip.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Táimid ag bogadh ar aghaidh. Anois an Teachta Róisín Shortall.

Deputy Róisín Shortall

The cost-of-living crisis is having a devastating impact on workers, families and businesses right across the country. Since 2021, energy prices have trebled. They have more than doubled since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. Average energy costs for consumers are now a staggering €4,300 per year. Everyone getting their gas and electricity bills in recent weeks will have been shocked by the amounts. As consumers suffer, energy companies are profiteering from this crisis and making what can only be described as obscene profits. At what point will the Taoiseach say enough is enough? These relentless price increases cannot continue. The toll they are taking on both families and businesses is disastrous. Nearly 270,000 customers were in arrears on their bills at the end of last year. Across the country, many families are choosing between heating their homes and feeding their families. The impact on businesses, particularly small and medium-sized businesses, has also been ruinous. Many otherwise viable businesses are facing the prospect of closure simply because they cannot afford to keep the light or heat on. Just €26 million out of a total budget of €1.2 billion has so far been drawn down from the temporary business energy support scheme, TBESS. This low take-up is evidence that the scheme is simply not fit for purpose. It is time the Government tried a new approach. A targeted energy price cap would cap the price of average energy usage for both businesses and households. This would mean that everyone would get their essential energy needs at a reasonable and affordable cost. Those who use in excess of that amount would pay more. Wealthier households would not disproportionately benefit and it would also incentivise energy conservation.

This is something that was introduced in Germany in December so we know it can be done. It would reduce prices and, crucially, provide security and certainty to households and businesses.

The Government introduced electricity credits at the start of this crisis because it said it was the quickest way to get supports to people. Now, more than a year later, the Government has had the time to design a better model of supports. A targeted price cap is the best way to support businesses and households, but it must be accompanied by a windfall tax to ensure energy companies cannot price gouge while the cap is in place. The Minister, Deputy Ryan, first promised a windfall tax in August and the EU signed off on one in September. Many other EU countries, including Germany and Spain, to name just two, have introduced a windfall tax. Why is the Government dithering?

Tomorrow, the Social Democrats will table a motion calling for targeted energy price caps. Will the Government support our motion and introduce them? When will we see the long-promised windfall tax finally introduced?

The Taoiseach

I thank the Deputy. I want to acknowledge the enormous pressure a lot of people, families and businesses are under because of the rise in energy costs. We have seen a dramatic rise in energy costs over the past two years, almost entirely driven by international factors, and exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and other factors related to it. In fairness, a lot has been done by the Government to help people with the rising cost of living. I might read them out later, but I can identify 25 individual measures alone that the Government has introduced only in the past year or so to help people with the cost of living in lots of different ways. We have always acknowledged that it is impossible to fully insulate everyone from the rising cost of living, though we strive to insulate those on the lowest incomes and those dependent on pensions and social welfare to the greatest extent that we can.

The Deputy mentioned the fact that some energy companies will make very large profits this year. They made very large profits last year and will do so again this year because of the high cost of energy. In many cases, they will make profits they never thought they could make. That ranges from the Corrib gas field to oil and petrol refineries and State-owned companies like the ESB. That is not fair, right or okay, and we will act on it. When it comes to State companies making very large profits, we can use the dividend system to take a special dividend and use the money to help families and businesses with the cost of living. When it comes to private companies, we have a windfall tax. The Minister, Deputy Ryan, updated the Cabinet on that earlier today so there will be such a tax on energy companies. I do not want to give too much detail, but the plans are very well advanced and hundreds of millions of euro will come in from a windfall tax on energy companies. That is money we did not factor into the budget for this year. It is additional funds we can use to help defray the cost of living.

When it comes to businesses, we acknowledge that the take-up of TBESS was a fraction of what we thought would be. The Ministers, Deputies McGrath and Coveney, are working on enhancements to that scheme so that more businesses qualify for it and they get larger amounts. We acknowledge that the take-up and drawdown of the scheme has been a fraction of what we thought would be.

We are reluctant to introduce price caps because they are very hard to cost. Essentially, if we introduce a price cap, the Government is saying that this is the cap people have to pay and we will pay the rest no matter what it is. Even if it is limited and targeted, it is very difficult to work out what it will cost and there are big risks involved in that. It is essentially a contract for difference, which the Deputy will remember in respect of Anglo Irish Bank. While the Deputy gave examples of Germany and Spain, it is also something that the Truss government tried in Britain and it did not work out so well.

Deputy Róisín Shortall

I thank the Taoiseach. I welcome the indication that we are moving to a windfall tax, however late in the day. What is the timescale for the introduction of such a tax?

Will that be retrospective?

The Taoiseach spoke about the main energy companies and the extent of the profits they have been making. We know that in the first six months of last year, the ESB made profits of €390 million, yet it imposed three separate price hikes last year. The profits of Bord Gáis Energy went up by 74% in the first six months of last year, yet it increased electricity prices on four occasions and gas prices on five occasions. Does the Taoiseach not accept that it is time to call a halt? We need to introduce the windfall tax but we also need to ensure there are direct benefits for households and businesses from that windfall tax. We need to reach a point where energy bills are again somewhat affordable. No deals are available at the moment and we need urgent action on this.

The Taoiseach

A windfall tax on energy companies is weeks away. I do not think we are late in the day because companies pay tax now on profits they made last year and last year only ended six or eight weeks ago. We will have that tax in place in the near future. It will be retrospective in the sense that the companies will pay it on the profits they made last year and will pay it again on the profits they make this year, so we will have two years of revenue coming in from that windfall tax. We will be able to use that to help businesses and households with the high cost of energy and the high cost of living. It will be a few months before we start seeing those gas and electricity prices fall but I believe we will start seeing them fall in a few months' time - first for businesses and. subsequent to that, for households.

We do not have exact figures yet but we do anticipate that a number of State energy companies will record very high profits, with the ESB being one of those. There are two mechanisms we can use to recoup some of those profits. One is the special dividend while the other is the windfall tax. We intend to use those mechanisms to take that money back and make sure we can use it to help homes, families and businesses with the cost of living.

Deputy Paul Murphy

Yesterday, I attended a powerful rally at Grangegorman organised by the students' union at TU Dublin in response to a racist attack on international students. Two hundred students came out to say that we will not stand for people being attacked because of the colour of their skin or where they come from. It is exactly what we need in response to the spate of violent racist attacks we have seen in the wake of the anti-refugee protests - no pandering to racism but standing up strong against it.

It is the same spirit that will motivate thousands of people to participate in the Ireland For All solidarity march at Parnell Square at 1.30 p.m. this Saturday. It is now supported by almost the entire trade union movement; by migrants' organisations such as the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland, the Irish Refugee Council and the Immigrant Council of Ireland; by anti-racist organisations like United Against Racism and Le Chéile; by feminist organisations like the National Women's Council of Ireland and Women's Collective Tallaght; by community organisations like Ballymun For All, Drimnagh For All and East Wall Here For All; and by football clubs and boxing clubs. The list goes on. They all understand the need to take a stand against racism and division. They know that in order to build a movement to force the Government to actually deal with the housing crisis, the health crisis and the neglect of our communities, we must stand united and that it only serves those who benefit from these crises to have people wrongly divided and wrongly blaming asylum seekers and refugees.

The Government has taken a very different approach. Last Wednesday, the Taoiseach told the Dáil that we should not play into those arguments. The very next day, he told the media that we need to be fair, firm and hard when it comes to migration. He spoke about people who come to Ireland with a false story or on false pretences. It was a shameful attempt to pander to anti-refugee sentiment and this shameful rhetoric has been matched with shameful actions. The Government has left over 100 people fleeing war and persecution sleeping on the streets in the context of an increase in racist violence. The Minister for Justice spoke inaccurately about people coming to our country illegally while speeding up deportations.

It is not a mystery where this political rhetoric will end up, because all across Europe, Fine Gael's sister parties have done exactly the same thing in response to the rise of the far right. All that has achieved is to legitimise its arguments and allow it to shape its narrative and drive its rise further.

Thankfully, the thousands who will turn out on Saturday do not share the Taoiseach's approach. They know there are enough resources in this country for everybody to have a decent home, a decent job and a decent standard of living, and they want to see homes for all, healthcare for all, services for all and an Ireland for all.

Will the Taoiseach listen to them? Will he abandon the current strategy, combat misinformation instead of pandering to it and tackle the underlying causes of alienation, which give fuel to anti-refugee sentiment, by committing to building social housing, using vacant properties and providing quality, accessible public healthcare for all?

The Taoiseach

Let me say at the outset that I do not believe there is any excuse for racism of any form, whether it is directed towards people who are new arrivals to this country, people who have been here for a long time or people who were born here. People should be judged by the content of their character and not the colour of their skin, full stop, and I do not think any of us, coming from any perspective, whether it is centre, right or left, should try to politicise the issue of racism or try to gain from it in any way. I certainly hope the Deputy will not be doing that.

We are facing, in Europe and in Ireland, an unprecedented refugee crisis, the likes of which we have never seen in this country. In the past year or so, we have accepted and welcomed maybe 100,000 people to Ireland, an absolutely huge number of people, most from Ukraine but others who have come from other parts of the world. By and large, we have been able to provide them with accommodation, food, shelter, heat and light, access to education and healthcare and, in many cases, access to employment too. I know it has not been a perfect response, but I am proud of the societal response from Ireland as to what we have managed to do in the past year. No country in western Europe, on a per capita basis, has accepted as many people from Ukraine as we have. Despite the enormous challenge, I believe we have done well it in the round and we should be willing to say that and to thank the Irish people and communities around the country, in particular, for the very warm welcome they have given people.

It is a real struggle to continue to find more accommodation and there is no point in being in any denial about that. If, two years ago, we had had amazing foresight, known Putin was going to invade Ukraine and we had built a city the size of Waterford with 20,000 houses and apartments for people who might come here, that place would be full by now. That is the scale of the numbers coming in. We have to try to manage that as best we can, and we will.

There are lots of people who will try to exploit the migrant crisis, for all sorts of reasons, on the far right and on the far left, and I will not be called out on that issue because I do not think it is right to conflate issues such as housing, healthcare, unemployment, crime, domestic violence or any of these things with migration. No matter what problem a country has, racists and the far right will blame that on migrants, and I think it is a mistake to conflate them. There are plenty of opportunities to have a go at the Government about any issue and I know the Deputy will take those opportunities, but he should not mix it up with an antiracism campaign. That is a mistake and I think he is playing into the hands of the far right in that regard.

A Deputy

Well said.

Deputy Paul Murphy

The Taoiseach says the far right and the far left will exploit the migrant crisis. I am not sure whether he has noticed, but the far right is organising protests outside the temporary, inadequate, emergency accommodation of asylum seekers. What is the far left doing? We are working with others to build a solidarity march to say that refugees are welcome and that these people are not responsible for the housing crisis. I have no idea what the Taoiseach is talking about.

The Taoiseach said people should not use this issue for political advantage and I agree. He will be talking to Senator Regina Doherty, who has spoken about people taking advantage of some of the “frailties in our system". He will be speaking to Fianna Fáil backbencher Deputy John McGuinness, who has called for a plan to move asylum seekers into a Kilkenny city hotel to be paused. He will be having a chat with himself, perhaps, about the use, very conscious, of the terms “fair, firm and hard”, which generated precisely the headlines he wanted.

Ordinary people do not agree with the Taoiseach's Government. They disagree with it for the creation of the housing crisis and for the representation of developers, speculators and so on.

They also do not agree with those who try to exploit those divisions.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Thank you, Deputy.

Deputy Paul Murphy

They will be on the street in their thousands this Saturday, 1.30 p.m. at Parnell Square. Finally, I would say-----

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

No, we are way over time.

Deputy Paul Murphy

Is the Taoiseach proud of over 100 people sleeping on the streets tonight, with a Dunne's voucher and €5 phone credit? Is that something to be proud of?

The Taoiseach

It is absolutely right that people should stand up against racism. We are working on a new national anti-racism strategy and will have that quite soon. We will implement it and fund it. However, I do not think that anyone should use an anti-racism campaign to promote a particular political party or particular ideology and I do not think that should be done. I will keep on saying that whether the Deputy likes it or not. As I have always said, I believe migration has been a good thing for Ireland. It has been good for our economy, good for our public services and it has helped to enrich our culture as well but people do want migration to be managed properly. There is nothing wrong with people wanting migration to be managed properly. That means being fair with refugees who come here from abroad fleeing war and making sure they get the protection that they deserve, and having legal pathways to migration. A total of 40,000 work permits issued last year to people coming here as economic migrants legally but it does mean being firm with the minority of people whose stories are not true and who come here on false pretences, telling them that their application will be processed quickly and refused, and that they will be returned. There is nothing wrong with that and if the Deputy thinks that nobody should be returned home, even if their story is false, he should be honest about that.

Deputy Paul Murphy

I am saying the Taoiseach is playing into anti-refugee rhetoric very cynically. It is contemptible.

Deputy Michael McNamara

At the start of the year, a major incident was declared at University Hospital Limerick, UHL, because of the number of people presenting in the accident and emergency department. In response a protocol was agreed whereby a limited number of patients could be brought by ambulance to Ennis instead. A meeting was held on 17 January with the Minister for Health, HSE senior management and the management of UHL as well as Oireachtas Members from the area. The Taoiseach's attendance at the meeting was noted and very welcome.

The acknowledgement by HSE management that UHL's model 2 hospitals such as Ennis, Nenagh and St. John's Hospital were underutilised was very welcome. At the meeting, I asked what additional resources would be provided to Ennis hospital in light of the new protocol and was told that a review would take place. It was implicit in the reply that those resources would be provided. Instead, all surgery stopped in Ennis for the month of January. Two newly equipped theatres lay idle and specialist staff were redeployed across the hospital.

I raised the under-resourcing of UHL with the Taoiseach's predecessor, Deputy Micheál Martin. I agree with him that it is not the Taoiseach's job to run a hospital but it is the Taoiseach's job to ensure that hospitals are adequately resourced within the constraints of national finances and that hospitals across the State are equally resourced. By any figures, UHL seems to be understaffed relative to the population of the region and relative to other regions and it is the Taoiseach's job to ensure that the existing resources are adequately managed.

Is the Taoiseach happy that the mid-west and UL Hospitals Group is adequately resourced relative to other parts of the State? If so, is he happy that those resources are being adequately managed?

The Taoiseach

What we want to achieve in healthcare, guided by the Sláintecare plan is essentially three things. We want healthcare to be affordable, that is, free at the point of use for a lot of people and affordable for everyone; access where people are getting healthcare in a timely manner; and we also want good patient outcomes. I am not satisfied with where we are with that as a country and I acknowledge that we have a lot more work to do and not just in the mid west region but across the country as well. People will bandy about a lot of different figures as to which region has the most beds, the least beds or which budget and I am not sure we always compare like with like when we do that. However, since December 2019, or roughly since this Government took office, we have seen a very big increase in investment in healthcare.

University Hospital Limerick, for example, has grown its workforce by more than 1,000 full-time staff since then, just two and a half years, and its budget has increased by 20%. A 96-bed inpatient ward block is under construction in Limerick. The Minister for Health turned the sod on that back in October. As I have indicated before, we need to start planning for further bed expansion in UHL because it will be needed.

In relation to Ennis, Nenagh and St. John’s hospitals, there has been a shift in policy. Our ambulance service is different from what it was ten or 12 years ago and we believe we can now safely bring patients directly to hospitals like Ennis, Nenagh and St. John’s if the patient is stable. That makes sense for many reasons I do not need to explain to Deputies. Unstable and severely ill patients go to the emergency department in Limerick while those who are sick but stable will go to Nenagh or Ennis. We acknowledge additional resources will be required in those centres if they are to see additional patients.

The medical assessment unit pathway for Nenagh came into force on Tuesday, 7 February and the pathway for Ennis Hospital came into operation on 9 January. The new pathway allows stable medical patients meeting agreed clinical criteria to be treated in the model 2 hospital rather than having to go to the emergency department in Limerick. We think that will make a positive change and a difference. It is envisaged that similar measures will be introduced in St. John’s Hospital in Limerick in the near future.

Deputy Michael McNamara

Like the Taoiseach, I hope it will make a positive change but the change it did make was the cancellation of surgeries in Ennis, two theatres lying idle and specialist staff being redeployed. There is something badly wrong with the utilisation of the model 2 hospitals.

The Taoiseach talked about figures and the Minister for Health talked about 1,000 people in the UL Hospitals Group. I received other figures yesterday saying just 60 of the 3,000-odd whole-time equivalent positions created in 2022 were in the UL group, notwithstanding the fact that UHL is the most consistently overcrowded hospital in the country. This time last year we learned there were no additional beds to be provided there, despite the fact they were being provided in less crowded hospitals.

This has an impact on real people. I have a letter from a 78-year-old woman who presented at Ennis Hospital and was told that, because there was no orthopaedic consultant available, she had to go to Limerick. She was on a trolley in Limerick for days. That is just another statistic but it is a real life affected by the fact we are not utilising our model 2 hospitals in the region to the extent we can and should.

The Taoiseach

I do not know exactly why surgery was cancelled in Ennis during that period. The Minister for Health is beside me and has said he will check that out. It could be that the hospital was simply full of medical patients. That happens, particularly during winter when the surgical wards have to be given over to medical patients because so many people come in with pneumonia, respiratory infections and other things. That is why surgery is sometimes cancelled and it is one of the reasons we want to develop surgical hubs and elective hospitals.

The Deputy will know what is happening in Croom, for example, where there is elective and managed care only. One of the risks of using the medical assessment units more in Ennis and Nenagh hospitals is that if more medical patients are taken to those hospitals, surgical beds may be taken up by medical patients, thus requiring surgeries to be cancelled. That is something we always have to factor in and is one of the reasons we are moving towards surgical hubs and dedicated beds.