My question comes under improving waiting times for hospital procedures. A constituent of mine who is a nurse has chronic back pain from complications with scoliosis and she has been on a hospital waiting list for surgery for more than 12 months. On two occasions the surgery was scheduled at Tallaght Hospital and on both occasions the surgery was cancelled. The woman in question was escorted to the theatre only to be told that the operation would not go ahead and that she must go home and await a further appointment. The reason given for the cancellation is that there was no high dependency bed. Her surgeon told her that would continue to happen until something is done to address the problem. After seven years in government what plans does the Taoiseach have to ensure that this practice stops and patients do not have their operations cancelled continually, something which has a devastating mental and physical effect on patients?

We have two plans. After years of failed policies of reducing the number of hospital beds, we are going to increase the number of hospital beds in the health service so there is an adequate number of beds. That is why we fully funded the bed capacity review to provide 2,500 more acute hospital beds. Second, we are going to build three elective-only hospitals - one in Dublin, one in Galway and one in Cork. Those two measures together will help reduce cancellations significantly.