The details that emerged during the inquest of 16-year-old Aoife Johnston were horrific. She did not need surgery; she needed an antibiotic. Instead of receiving the care she needed, she was left to die. On the night that Aoife lay dying, one doctor was trying to manage 191 emergency department patients. Medics at the inquest described the emergency department that night as a war zone and grossly dangerous. Consultant Jim Gray described the emergency department that night as a deathtrap and said it is still a deathtrap. The Minister may have been taken aback by Dr. Gray's remarks but I do not think anybody in the mid-west area was.

UHL is consistently the most overcrowded hospital in the country. It is overcrowded all the time. Today, we learned that last month, it had nearly twice as many patients on trolleys as the second most overcrowded hospital, which was Cork University Hospital. The Minister for Health has conceded that chronic overcrowding means the hospital is not safe. That is what a deathtrap means; it is unsafe. I know the Taoiseach will tell me about the resources that have been invested in UHL, as he has just done, and plans to increase capacity, but additional bed capacity is not coming onstream fast enough. A new 96-bed unit, which is really a 71-bed unit, will come onstream next year. Another 96-bed unit is to be delivered in 2028 and that is if there are no delays. People in the mid-west cannot wait that long, and they should not have to. They do not have to. A fully operational 53-bed hospital in Limerick city, the landmark Barrington's hospital, has just come on the market with a guide price of €12.5 million. This presents a unique opportunity for the Government to act decisively and speedily to at least address part of the problem in UHL.

Aoife Johnston and many others were failed by the State. We cannot fail any more people in that way. Was the Government alerted in advance to the sale of Barrington's hospital? Is the State considering buying the hospital or is it investigating if this is an option? Finally, if the Government is not interested in buying the hospital, why not?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I certainly will not disagree with her in any way about how disturbing the testimony was at the inquest.

I am conscious every time we discuss the issue in this House, rightly so, of Aoife Johnston's family. I express my deepest sympathies to her family, who have been devastated by her loss. My thoughts are with her family after what has been an unimaginably difficult and painful time.

I did hear of some changes that have happened in the hospital and it is worth briefly putting them on the record of the House. When the head of the HSE spoke yesterday about the emergency department, he talked about the fact that the number of doctors there since the time of Aoife's death has gone from 26 to 47, the number of emergency consultants has gone from ten to 15 and the nurse staffing levels in the emergency department have increased not only to safe staffing levels, but beyond it.

I also want to be very clear that when it comes to all of our emergency departments across the health service, they are exempt from any recruitment pause or anything else in that space.

I do fully accept that there is an urgent need to inject more capacity into the health services in the mid-west. I am truthfully not aware of the issue concerning Barrington's Hospital, but I will check for the Deputy because when Members make constructive suggestions in this House that is what they deserve to happen. I will certainly talk to the Minister for Health about that and see what his view, and that of the HSE, is on it. I am happy to come back to the Deputy directly in regard to it too.

I take her point that the work needs to come on track even faster. We have already seen 150 new beds opened in the UL Hospitals Group since January 2020, 98 of which are at University Hospital Limerick. As she alluded to, work commenced last year on a new 96-bed ward block. I am told it is expected to be open next year. This first block will add an additional 71 new acute beds to UHL. As the Deputy rightly said, the remaining 25 of the beds are replacing existing beds from the so-called Nightingale wards that require replacement and refurbishment to be in line with regulatory requirements.

Preparatory work has also commenced on a second 96-bed block. All steps are being taken to accelerate that. All 96 beds in that second block will be additional for the hospital, comprising 48 medical beds and 48 surgical beds. The Minister visited the hospital again recently and he met with doctors, nurses and senior managers. He announced a further package of interim or quick measures to try to provide capacity in a number of ways, including procuring community beds, 20 further step-down transition beds, rehab beds in County Clare and 16 additional fast-build beds. The opening hours of the region's three acute medical assessment units at Nenagh, Ennis and St. John’s are due to be extended to 24-7 on a phased basis. GP and advanced nurse practitioner on-the-door services are also being provided for the emergency department. I say that by way of, I hope, conveying a view that the Government is doing everything and anything it can right now to try and expand capacity, both physical capacity in terms of beds and infrastructure but also through alternative pathways of care.

I thank the Taoiseach. I am not suggesting that acquiring Barrington's Hospital is going to solve all the problems by any means but it will make a significant contribution to expanding capacity. It is an existing operating hospital and could be brought onstream very speedily. I welcome the fact that the Taoiseach will pursue that further.

Other critical things obviously need to happen in regard to UHL. The UL Hospitals Group is the only hospital group in the country that does not have a model 3 hospital. That has been a serious oversight in recent years. I ask that consideration would now be given to designating one of the other hospitals in the group as a model 3, as a certain amount of emergency department work could be carried out there if it had such a designation.

The recruitment embargo is having a significant impact on service delivery in UHL because there are not adequate numbers in certain professions. I again ask the Taoiseach to have a look at that and not just talk about global numbers, as specific professions need additional staff.

I hope he will come back with a response on those three issues: Barrington's Hospital, the need for a model 3 hospital to be included in the group, because that would make a very significant difference, and the staffing embargo.

I certainly will come back to the Deputy on those three issues. I will liaise directly with the Minister for Health and revert to her then.

I take the point about global figures and the need to make sure that we do not just use them and that we get under the bonnet. I would just say on the recruitment issue that I have endeavoured to do quite a bit of that in relation to UHL. By any objective standards the level of additional staff in UHL, relative to other hospitals, has been significant. That leads me to raise two other issues, not to be provocative but because they also merit consideration. One is how the hospital actually operates. There are serious issues in that regard and that is why we are sending a support team in. I think the Deputy Shortall is a believer in looking at all aspects of the hospital. That is important. The second - I have not checked on this in a few days - is that I believe this hospital also has one of the lowest uptakes of the new consultant contract. The contract has made a real difference in terms of separating public and private and it is disappointing to see some hospitals with a particularly low uptake. I would add those two other items to the three items the Deputy raised.