The Government is breaking records for all the wrong reasons in our health service. For the first time in our history, we have had a summer trolley crisis, with record wait times. We have seen people aged 75 and over waiting for six or nine days on a trolley. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, said just this afternoon that more than 100,000 patients have waited on trolleys so far this year.

It is clear we need more hospital beds, yet one in four beds that are funded have still not been delivered. Over 1,000 patients in hospital cannot get access to home care and so their discharge is delayed. What we have is chaotic. We need investment in our hospitals but also in home and community care. Other than simply having a winter plan, what meaningful action is the Government proposing to meet this crisis head on?

A well-resourced winter plan is meaningful action but we need to continue to increase the permanent capacity of the healthcare system and build up resilience in the system. It is the case that we are faced with an unprecedented number of presentations. In our children's hospitals, according to reports in the news yesterday, there has been, I think, a 50% increase in presentations relative to 2019, which is extraordinary. In our acute adult hospitals we are seeing more older people and people who are more frail and sicker presenting. This underlines the need for us to continue to increase capacity. We have added over 900 new acute hospital beds, 73 sub-acute beds and over 340 acute beds since coming into Government. We have increased staffing in the public health service by 15,000 people in the past two and a half years and we have brought about a reduction of 40% in the number of people waiting for home care. The problem we have is human resources and the availability of people-----

We had a trolley crisis in the summer.

-----but I accept the point that we have to build up permanent capacity further.