Beaumont Hospital is 37 years old. Its catchment area has more than trebled since it opened yet many of the facilities remain the same. While we can talk about a number of issues in regard to Beaumont, I want to focus on capacity and space. I had the privilege of being shown around the hospital by clinicians recently. There are solutions to provide space in accident and emergency, resus and ICU so the great clinicians working there can do their jobs safely and more effectively, help more people and save more lives. However, for some reason, the management are not progressing these plans, so they are on the shelf. I am asking for ministerial intervention to include senior clinicians and management to ensure that Beaumont Hospital has the space available to provide the best service it can.

The Deputy is correct that Beaumont is one of the older national hospitals, and I think Cork University Hospital was a replication of it. I think the then Minister, Charles Haughey, decided he did not want any more new designers and he said they should just bring the plan from Beaumont to Cork, and we got a hospital much faster. They are old hospitals and they have been subject to a lot of investment since. Under the Minister’s first tranche of expanded acute bed proposals, I would have thought there might be opportunities for Beaumont. I suspect there must have been collaboration and consultation between the hospital, the HSE and the Minister in respect of that. I will talk to the Minister about it. Deputy Smith has obviously been on the ground, talking to the consultants and the hospital. I will pursue that.