In the past year, over 16% of the population of the mid-west went to University Hospital Limerick, UHL, for unscheduled urgent care. We have all read and heard the horror stories. Unfortunately, a lot of them are true. I am sure the Taoiseach saw the thousands of angry people who took to the streets of Limerick on Saturday. We know the hospital is stretched far beyond capacity and the staff are stretched beyond breaking point. It is the only emergency department that serves more than 470,000 people. The mid-west has a disproportionately ageing and disadvantaged population in comparison with the rest of the Republic. It is the only region where there is one stand-alone model 4 hospital with no model 3 facility to support it. Under the Taoiseach's previous two Governments, people have died on the road in Loop Head and Liscannor waiting for an ambulance to reach them in time. Is this our rural future? The Taoiseach is a trained doctor. He cannot seriously look me in the eye and say this is acceptable. The case has never been stronger to reinstate emergency department services at Ennis. The people of the mid-west, particularly in Clare, want the Government to see sense on this issue and to put a task force in place to start the process.

There is no consideration, at the moment, of opening more emergency departments. However, in my view the reconfiguration that happened some time ago was not done in the right way. There is a very strong clinical view for the consolidation of emergency departments. However, the resources needed to be put in place before such a reconfiguration. That is why I intervened, for example, in the reconfiguration in Navan. UHL is under significant pressure. I turned the sod recently on an additional 96 beds. There are two more plans that will provide a further 200 beds. We are also putting in a surgical hub. There is an awful lot of investment going in. We will be investing in Nenagh, Ennis and further in St. John's Hospital and other hospitals. This is the way to do it.

I would also say, however, that there have to be changes to working practices and the effectiveness of patient flow through those hospitals. We saw recently that when weekend discharge and late evening discharge were put in place and the community sector and the hospital teams worked together, there was an immediate and important reduction in the number of patients on trolleys. The Government will continue to invest. We will prioritise those projects, but that must be met with changes to working practices, how patients are seen, when they are seen and when they are discharged both in the acute sector and in the community sector.