Page 45 of the programme for Government states the Government will "Ensure capacity for a COVID-19 rapid response, including bed and ICU capacity and for non-COVID emergencies into the longer term, by utilising some private hospital capacity, if necessary."

The people have been wonderful during this pandemic, as have the front-line staff. However, in a recent radio interview, the chief executive of University Hospital Limerick stated the hospital had 12 ICU beds, 16 high-dependency beds and 13 people in the ICU. She said staffing requirements meant the hospital could only deal with another three ICU cases. Given the current high demand for ICU beds at University Hospital Limerick, the fact the Taoiseach is a former Minister for Health, as are three of his colleagues in government, and that we are almost two years in to the Covid pandemic, will the Taoiseach outline what steps have been taken to ensure there is additional capacity to increase the number of available ICU beds at the hospital?

We are very conscious of the pressures on University Hospital Limerick. Surge plans remain in place and are being activated as needed with the HSE's critical care major surge working group providing support to all hospitals. Very significant funding of €52 million was provided by the Government in budget 2021 to add an additional 66 beds in Limerick and the HSE has advised 42 of these beds are now open, bringing baseline capacity to 297. They include ten additional critical care beds in Limerick, of which six are in new-build capacity. Again, whatever we can do in the immediate term we will do, resource-wise. We accept additional resources will be required at Limerick.