I thank the Taoiseach. Every night, some 20 people are treated on chairs on Beaumont Hospital. People are remaining for up to 70 hours on trolleys in an overcrowding crisis in that hospital. Nurse Moira Wynne said, "It's disgusting to watch. The noise level is humongous, there is no dignity or privacy and elderly patients are disoriented." There are 49 more patients than there are beds on an average night. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has called for this to be declared a national emergency.

We know there were early warning signs to the Government relating to the crisis at Beaumont Hospital. The Taoiseach will remember that in June last, Professor Shane O'Neill resigned from his clinical directorship because he could not stand over significant clinical risks at the hospital. He described the accident and emergency department as being "entirely unsafe and indefensible". That was last June. In September, the CEO of the hospital sent an e-mail to all hospital staff as 58 patients were on trolleys. He said that in the interest of the safety of all patients, the hospital should regain its stability as a matter of urgency. Last Friday, this national tertiary hospital, which has one of the two neuro-surgical centres in this State, was taken off call. Essentially, no patients could be taken in, no ambulances could be used and no 999 calls could be dealt with. It was completely off call.

The bottom line is that incredibly, the budget of Beaumont Hospital over the past 12 months was cut by €14 million on the outturn. That is when the seeds of this crisis were sown by the Government in the very dishonest Estimate for the health services we got last year. A total of €14 million was taken out. When one adds in the fact that the fair deal scheme was screwed altogether in terms of the lack of funding over the past 12 months, one begins to see how a crisis like this develops in the days leading up to Christmas.

A question please.

Will the Taoiseach accept that there is a crisis and commit to providing the necessary funding to alleviate this situation? It is about time that the Minister for Health was told that the time for becoming a commentator on the sidelines about everything that takes place in the health service is over. The former Minister, Deputy Reilly, is long gone and it is time that the current Minister took responsibility because he is the Minister for Health right now, not some sort of detached observer or commentator. That is how it is coming across. It is not good enough to say it will take 18 months for this to be resolved.

Will the Taoiseach address the funding issue and the €14 million cut from Beaumont Hospital's budget this year?

It is not a satisfactory position and it is not the first time it has happened. Beaumont Hospital is a case in point. It has had these problems for many years. It was only when the Government took office that trolleys began to be counted on a daily basis in hospitals. That never happened previously. The hospital has been working with the special delivery unit on a winter planning initiative to address the seasonal surges that occur. The Government provided an additional €25 million to address the issue of delayed discharges and targeted hospital and community services which could assist in dealing with patients discharged from the hospital by meeting their care needs outside the acute hospital setting. This will free some bed capacity. The intention was to provide money in 2015, but €3 million was advanced in 2014 to allow for the delayed discharge initiative to commence this year. This has facilitated the allocation of fair deal and home care packages-----

There is a four month waiting list.

-----and the provision of transitional care beds for patients who do not yet have a long-term care place or an appropriate support package.

They are waiting 20 weeks under the fair deal scheme.

A number of patients who had been waiting to be discharged from Beaumont Hospital were able to leave as a result of these measures. The Minister for Health is also re-establishing the emergency department forum which will meet for the first time on 22 December and will meet monthly thereafter to examine the solutions being put in place to address the problems experienced by emergency departments.

Some of the important decisions have been taken by Beaumont Hospital, one of the busiest hospitals in the country, including the use of a day ward to accommodate patients, particularly those waiting longer than 24 hours for admission, the cancellation of elective surgery, notification to GPs and the public that the hospital is experiencing severe challenges and associated advice on alternative sources of care, whether it be GP, D-Doc, pharmacy or private health care clinics, and access for frail and elderly patients who are medically stable but require a rapid geriatric assessment at the clinic led by Mater hospital consultants in Smithfield. Additional physicians have also been allocated to the emergency department to treat patients in a more timely manner.

This is not a situation one could call ideal, but Beaumont Hospital is one in which these problems have been arising for many years. I hope the additional moneys allocated and the reconstitution of the emergency department forum will have an impact both before the end of the year and throughout January, when traditionally there is a surge in delays in seeking entry to hospital.

Does the Taoiseach accept any responsibility for this situation? When one cuts a hospital's budget by €14 million, this is what happens. The waiting list under the fair deal scheme increased to nearly 20 weeks in November, or an average of 15 weeks across those applying for a fair deal scheme bed. Clearly, there will be delayed discharges from hospitals when one screws the budget to that extent. All of this is due to the budget the Government decided to introduce last year. That is why discretionary medical cards became a major issue. It was not an accident on the part of bureaucrats in doing things in the wrong way; it was something called medical card probity, based on unrealistic and dishonest figures. What has happened in the health service in the past 12 months is a scandal. We are beginning to witness more of the repercussions in what happened in Beaumont Hospital on Friday. The budget was cut to the bone; the health service was screwed and a mirage and spin were produced to suggest people could live within budgets that were never realistic. That is why we have appalling treatment of older people in hospitals and emergency departments. There is no dignity or privacy for them. The same happened in respect of medical cards. Ill children and adults lost their medical cards because of a dishonest budgetary strategy, designed more than 12 months ago, which is still having an appalling impact on day-to-day health services.

As I said, the situation is not ideal. Ministers recognised this and substantial moneys were made available to the Department of Health and the HSE in the budget both to meet the shortfall and to stabilise and improve the situation in 2015 and beyond.

Thirty-five outpatient appointments were cancelled in Cork University Hospital last week.

In the Estimates €25 million was allocated for 2015, of which €3 million is being brought forward to deal with patients being discharged. Funding has just been approved for 1,000 nursing home support - fair deal - scheme places; 700 routine approvals have been accelerated, while there have been 300 additional approvals in anticipation of €10 million in funding becoming available in January 2015 to deal with the issue of delayed discharges. This means that the waiting time for fair deal scheme approval will be reduced to between 12 and 15 weeks in quarter one of 2015.

It should never have reached that point.

A number of initiatives have been taken to mitigate the situation in Beaumont Hospital.

The Taoiseach is waffling like the Minister for Health.

Work is being done with the teams at the front door, where access is gained, and the clinical programmes to improve decision making and pathways to care. Work is also being done with the clinical teams and the director to improve throughput and the flow at the hospital. The emerging hospital groups are examining the available capacity to free up space to facilitate the emergency department. Work is also being done in the social care of patients classified as delayed discharges. The winter planning group has been established. The HSE, with the hospital's executive management, has taken a range of actions to deal with this emerging issue. It is not ideal, but the Minister, Deputy Leo Varadkar, is working very hard with the extra allocation to find a more satisfactory solution in Beaumont Hospital.

He is out of touch.