Last Wednesday, 80 people were on trolleys in University Hospital Limerick. I am familiar with the hospital as it is my local main acute hospital. That is worrying. I am used to such figures in the depths of January and February but not in September.

Today, the Government launched the winter initiative from the HSE. I understand it was launched late but had been ready for some time. The Government is saying there are 1,500 new beds. A total of 830 new acute beds were announced but 409 of these are actually already in place. Similarly, some 63 new critical care beds were announced but 45 are already in place. That means only an extra 18 beds. The announcement states 484 new sub-acute beds are coming but 395 of these are already in place, so in fact there are only 89. The Government is saying 1,500 new beds will be delivered as part of this winter plan, which extends until April. However, when we add it all up, there are only 528 new beds. Why is the Government announcing 1,500 beds? That is my first question.

Will the Minister break down where those beds are going? We need to know where the concentration of beds will be. We know we have extraordinary issues in the acute sector in the mid-west and in Cork University Hospital as well. We know where the problems are. We know wards in Beaumont Hospital in Dublin are closed because of Covid-19 outbreaks. There is a difference between what is being spun here versus what is the reality. I want the Minister to give assurances with regard to these figures that we will have capacity, because when Covid-19 goes into hospitals beds will disappear. The virus spreads and we do not want it to spread, so wards will close. Will the Minister give clarity on those figures immediately and break down where the beds will go?

There are ambitious plans for recruitment in health, with 12,500 staff to be recruited, including 5,000 before Christmas and 7,500 afterwards. Where will they come from? Ms Phil Ní Sheaghdha of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has pointed out that some nurses who came home from abroad have been unable to get full-time jobs. What will radically change? Will the Minister explain that to us? Where will we get the consultants we require? The Minister for Health is out on a limb on this. I have never seen a Minister commit to something so much. Will the Minister outline where all these staff will come from, how the Government will deliver this commitment and where these staff will be placed?

Will the Minister tell us the position on the flu vaccine? Some 1.5 million people will get the flu vaccine. We know there is a delay and I accept there are issues internationally. However, we were pointing this out long before now. How will the vaccine get out in time before Christmas? How will we ensure that 1.5 million people, including vulnerable groups and categories, will be dealt with?

I will recap. Where are the beds and what are the beds? Where are the staff and where are they going? How will the flu vaccine be delivered before Christmas?

The commitment of the Government to manage and get us through this health crisis is clear in the additional €2.5 billion spent so far. That will not be the end of it this year or next year. There will have to be major multibillion additional spending so that we can cope. To date, we have coped. It has been difficult and has involved serious stress on front-line workers and everyone else in the country as we have tried to suppress the virus and avoid going beyond the capacity of our health system. However, we have managed that to date. That is why in recent weeks the Government had to make a tough call by raising the level of restrictions in Dublin. Although the numbers are low, they are rising. That forced us to make that call.

That is the primary issue in terms of managing through this winter period. I believe we can manage it. We have 11,000 beds in the system. Even though the numbers are rising, the number of Covid-19 beds is still relatively small. If we can see in Dublin and other parts of the country the same success that we saw in counties Kildare, Offaly and elsewhere in terms of stopping the increase in its tracks, we will manage our way through it. Part of that involves €600 million on top of the €2.5 billion spending already committed this year. This additional spending is to ensure we get through this critical winter period. My understanding is that this will provide a further 900 acute beds and 50 critical care beds. I am confident that the system, as it has shown in the past six months, will be able to be flexible and adapt as needs be, depending on what numbers are required in the bed capacity. The approach will include measures such as bringing private hospitals into the system, as needs be and if we need to do so, which we also did earlier this year.

Critical to managing this will be maintaining the strategic direction of change that was agreed by the previous Dáil and committed to by this Government, namely, the development of Sláintecare. The critical point in our system, as we all know, is in the emergency wards and rooms in our hospitals. We should use what happened during Covid-19, that is, the emergence of the ability to use online and other systems and other new efficient ways of working, to take out some of those pinch-point bottlenecks. That will be the key measure. The HSE and the hospital system, in managing Covid-19, have shown exactly the flexibility we need to be able to manage our winter programme.

I will have to come back to Deputy Kelly with specifics on how exactly we will roll out the flu vaccine.

That is a technical issue and I will have to come back to the Deputy with the mechanism for doing it. The key to it is this broader strategic approach to how we address Covid, implement Sláintecare and use the flexibility that has come in the Covid period to manage the winter period with these additional resources. I am confident that we can and will do that.

I mean no disrespect to the Minister but that is not an answer. He obviously does not have a clue. He does not know the data. This plan has been there for a couple of weeks. It has not been launched, for whatever reason, but he obviously does not know the data. There are 830 new acute beds, 63 critical care beds and 484 new sub-acute beds. Of that 830, 409 are in place; of the 63, 45 are in place; and of the 484, 395 are in place. The real figures, therefore, are 421, 45 and 89. That is information for the Minister from me, which he should have. Why is the Government saying this volume of beds are in place or are coming, when this is the reality? These are the figures that were broken down at the Government's press conference announcing this this morning, but the Minister does not know them here in the Dáil. I ask him, although I know he is not the Minister for Health, where these beds are going.

The Minister for Health always talks about "the data". Can we get a breakdown of those who have been diagnosed with cancer, month by month, this year versus last year, so that we can see that we are dealing with the disease, which has impacted so much in our society, in the best way? The figures have not been published.

My questions relate to the data on cancer figures and, most important, what the figures for the beds are, why the Government is announcing 1,500 beds and where they are going.

I think it is better to be more honest. If the Deputy puts a series of questions to me about the data, and if I do not have the specific data to hand or in my mind, I prefer to say I will come back to him with the data. That is a more honest reply.

Why take the question in the first place?

I will be honest. I spent an hour and a half answering questions on which I do have the data, relating to transport issues. I was not able to go to the press conference the Deputy mentioned.

The Government has had the data for weeks.

I would prefer to leave the people at the press conference to give the data and explain it because they have real, up-to-date expertise in the area.

What I want to make clear is the strategic approach the Government is taking. It is the wider strategic approach that we, as members of the Government, have to consider. There is no shortage of support from the Government or of flexibility and effort if we find ourselves in a difficult winter period due to the Covid pandemic progressing in a direction we do not want, or to influenza, or to a recurrence of the problem of people on trolleys, which is a perennial problem every winter.

The key strategic point I want to make to the Deputy, which I believe is the important point, is that we will use the flexibility we learned during the Covid pandemic to make sure our health system removes some of the obstacles that exist there. That is not a data point but it is the key point in terms of how we improve our health service at this difficult time. We will use strategic decisions such as the development of online, eHealth systems that our system has developed in the Covid period to solve this problem. That is the emphasis we need to make and the important lesson we need to learn. It is what we now need to deliver.