The HSE and the Department of Health management has eye-watering salaries and the perpetual luxury of learning lessons. In the week of Vicky Phelan's death we learned there has been no retrospective review of cervical slides for the past four years, despite recommendations to do so. This morning we learned that Tusla has spent €400,000 - nearly half a million - without tender, on a company managing information that is being withheld from the people it is about.

The lessons supposedly being comfortably learned are being lived extremely painfully by the citizens. My young constituent, Jack, was hospitalised with Covid - the same infection - for the third time in Crumlin hospital. This young non-verbal boy with Down's syndrome and additional multiple needs was left on a trolley for two days and two nights. This is an unacceptable trauma for Jack and his mam, Aisling. It is hard to imagine we are doing trolley counts now in children's hospitals. Where is the infection control for a child with Covid on a trolley? How many other children were put at risk because Jack was treated so disgracefully? Spare us the comfy lessons. Where is the real action plan for a functioning health service in this Republic?

I am very sorry to hear about the experience of Jack and Aisling, but we have done trolley counts in children's hospitals for a long time now, perhaps ten or 20 years. Thankfully, it is a much less common experience than in our adult hospitals but it happens in the winter period in particular. A new children's hospital is under construction and, in a few weeks' time, I will able to tell the Deputy that it will be open next year. I look forward to being able to say that and to see it happening. Contrary to what has been said, if you take the entire bed complement, including the day beds, there has been a significant increase in capacity. It will be in addition to the satellite units in Blanchardstown and Tallaght and will make a big difference for the better.