It will come as no surprise to the Taoiseach that I wish to raise the ongoing crisis in University Hospital Limerick. As we sit here, 113 people are on trolleys there.

These are people who were assessed as in need of a bed but no bed was available for them. The trolley crisis at University Hospital Limerick continues to impact patient safety and well-being, as the Minister is well aware. Already this year, we have had 3,392 people treated in this manner. It is totally unacceptable. It is not fair on them and their families or on the staff who must deal with them, often in an unsafe and desperately overcrowded emergency department. The lack of beds affects nearly all departments across University Hospital Limerick. Much of the normal activity in the hospital is suspended daily. Additional patients are moved onto wards and into hallways outside emergency units. Elective surgeries are cancelled. People arrive at the hospital to be told that their scheduled procedure has been cancelled due to the lack of beds. What steps is the Government taking, here and now, to deal with the numbers of people on trolleys and to stop the cancellation of procedures in the hospital because there are no beds available?

I thank the Deputy for raising the matter. A number of different things are happening. As the Deputy is aware, Limerick has already been the beneficiary of additional bed capacity and staffing. Another 96-bed unit will be completed shortly. There is also a surgical hub. The Deputy mentioned scheduled procedures being cancelled. Those procedures will be scheduled in the surgical hub and that will be followed by an elective hospital. Limerick is the beneficiary of considerable investment in beds and staff. There are still problems, however, and I thank the Deputy for highlighting them. He is quite right to do so. As he is aware, I have this week placed a particular focus on the deployment of all of the contracts in all of the hospitals to ensure we are getting the best outcomes for patient safety and to ensure that all hospitals are consistently using all the levers available to them to avoid the consistent problems that Limerick has.