I want to highlight the ongoing crisis in the health service in my county, Tipperary. Yesterday, 41 people were on trolleys in South Tipperary General Hospital. Given the size of the hospital and the population it serves, that has to be a record. The long-promised modular unit in Clonmel is still lying idle because of a failure to recruit staff. Our Lady's Hospital in Cashel is lying idle just 12 or 13 miles away. Nenagh General Hospital is being underutilised and the emergency department in University Hospital Limerick is in crisis. The people of Tipperary are fed up with the lack of service and people are dying because of that in the county. We want improvements.

Page 6 of the programme for Government promises that efforts to increase access to safe, timely care close to patients' homes will be a priority for the Government. Almost four years on, the health service has deteriorated at an alarming rate under the Government's watch. The numbers of people waiting on trolleys on a daily basis is a national scandal. A total of 649 people are on trolleys today, with Cork being the worst where 93 people have been waiting on trolleys. There were 65 patients are on trolleys in Cork University Hospital, CUH; 23 in the Mercy University Hospital; and five waiting for beds in Bantry General Hospital. Two weeks ago I spent a week fighting for a prominent man in Limerick to get a bed. He was left on a trolley for a week in University Hospital Limerick. What steps is the Government going to take? We are not yet in the thick of the winter. What is the Government going to do to address this appalling situation?

I outlined the Government's response to this earlier. Perhaps that was before the Deputy came to the Chamber. We are doing a number of things. First, we are increasing the number of beds across the country, including in Clonmel and Limerick. Since 2014, we have been adding more beds to the hospital system. Deputies will recall that when Fianna Fáil and the Green Party were in power during the boom, they took a policy decision to take thousands of beds out of our hospitals. As soon as we had the money to start reversing that, we did so and have been doing so from 2014 onwards.

We are also providing more funding for the fair deal scheme and home help because hundreds of people could be in nursing homes or at home with adequate supports rather than in hospital. We increased funding for those schemes significantly in budget 2020. We also secured an agreement with GPs to increase the scope of the services they provide in the community so that people with chronic diseases such as COPD and diabetes can be better looked after in the community and not need to go into hospital in the first place. Obviously that contract was signed a few months ago and it will be a while before the new services are up and running.