Problems with our healthcare system predate this Government. One might expect the Government to be uniquely qualified to deal with it given that it includes three previous Ministers for Health in the Cabinet, along with, of course, the Minister for Health, and yet problems persist and get worse. The people tasked with implementing Sláintecare have resigned. The IMO is balloting for industrial action. Non-consultant hospital doctors and medical scientists are on strike today. Nowhere is the problem more manifest than in University Hospital Limerick, UHL, where overcrowding continues. I welcome that an expert team was sent in there. I called for an independent review. When will this expert team report? To whom will it report? Will its report be published? What are its terms of reference? Will it include looking at whether some of the model 2 hospitals in the region now need to be upgraded to deal with the population in the mid-west?

We need a long-term solution as well as a short-term solution to the particular problems of overcrowding in UHL.

There is no doubt but that there are significant pressures at UHL. Overall, despite all of the negativity around health services, the bottom line is that in the past 20 years, Ireland has moved from 16th to first in the European Union league table of life expectancy. That is due to a whole range of public health measures but it is also due to investments in our health services, including cardiology, oncology, stroke treatment and so on.

We need to maintain that position.

However, we have real issues with emergency admission. Population growth has also played a role. The Deputy is correct. The problem is that the recruitment of senior clinicians tends to be in tertiary hospitals. All the various colleges, including anaesthesia, talk about the need for high-volume activity located in the tertiary hospitals. We have had this debate for 25 years.

When are we getting the reports of the expert group?

There are two aspects to the expert group. One is to have an immediate impact in terms of systems and flow through the hospitals. I will come back to the Deputy with details of the report.