There is concern in my constituency about the overcrowding in University Hospital Limerick. I have raised the issue countless times in this Chamber and the previous Dáil and communicated with the Ministers, yet nothing seems to have been done. University Hospital Limerick, which serves the mid-west region and is located in Limerick city, averages 1,000 patients per month lingering on trolleys, which is unacceptable in the middle of a pandemic. The issue has escalated to such proportions that the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, has called for an investigation into it. Staff are at their wits' end and the INMO has raised concerns that, while there has been significant recruitment and 100 new acute beds have been opened, the hospital still faces runaway overcrowding. This is unacceptable and has to stop. It is not good enough for the patients and staff. A 96-bed unit was committed to but only half of those will be new beds. The delivery of all 96 needs to be expedited.

Day after day, the figures show that University Hospital Limerick remains the most overcrowded hospital in the State. The INMO wants to know what is going wrong, as do I.

I thank the Deputy.

I back the call for HIQA to visit, investigate and make recommendations. Will the Tánaiste support that call and commit to acting on whatever recommendations HIQA makes?

Deputy, we are over time.

This is the first time in a long while when the issue of trolleys or hospital overcrowding has been raised with me in the House. It used to be something that was raised nearly every week when I was on my feet. That tells a story in itself. The problem of trolleys and hospital overcrowding has not gone away by any means, but it is considerably less than it was before the pandemic. Even though emergency department attendances are back to 2019 levels, we have seen a considerable reduction in the number of people who have to wait on a trolley for a bed. I do not have the exact figures, but it is down more than half on what it would have been in 2018 or 2019. That is due to the additional investment, changes in pathways and reforms that have been made by the HSE in recent years. This is not to say that we do not still have big problems in some hospitals. Limerick is one of those. It will require more capacity in the years ahead.