In 2009, 24-hour accident and emergency departments were closed in Ennis and Nenagh. At the time it was said this would lead to centres of excellence. Fourteen years on, that simply has never been the case, and it is a falsehood for some to say that it led to any centre of excellence. It was quite the opposite. The problem has been funding, with so many people through one 24-hour accident and emergency system. We saw on Monday that the number of patients on trolleys in University Hospital Limerick, UHL, again reached 130. We are now at record levels in UHL. The answer to this is to reopen an additional 24-hour accident and emergency department in the region. We have good medical assessment units and local injury units, but the analysis about opening another 24-hour accident and emergency department was done about four or five years ago. May I ask just one simple question? Will the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health look for a new analysis, if the mid-west can sustain it and if it can be funded and opened, of an additional 24-hour accident and emergency department to ease all this incessant pressure?

I appreciate that there is an ongoing and very severe problem with overcrowding in University Hospital Limerick. I point out for the record of the House that the number of people waiting for a bed in our hospitals today is 60 lower than was the case this time last year. That is a reflection of the additional beds and resources that have been put into the system. I would have to refer the Deputy's question to the Minister, Deputy Donnelly. I do not want to raise expectations in this regard. I absolutely appreciate where Deputy Crowe is coming from, but the very solid advice we get from emergency department consultants, who are the ones on the front line dealing with the sickest patients, is not that we need more emergency departments but that we need further consolidation of the existing ones.