According to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, September was the worst September on record for hospital overcrowding. Facts matter in these debates. There is a permanent state of crisis in the accident and emergency departments. Some 70,000 people left an emergency department without being seen or completing their treatment between January and July of this year. This is utterly unacceptable. More than 30,000 people waited longer than 24 hours to be admitted or discharged. This should be setting off alarm bells in the Department of Health.

There are three solutions that need to be advanced. We need to build more beds. We have the fifth lowest number of hospital beds per capita in Europe, according to Eurostat. We need 300 additional beds per year according to the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI. Last year, the Government was 100 short. This year will be even worse.

However, the answer cannot be found in hospitals. We must invest in community care. There is a shortage of GPs, step-down facilities and home care. Some 100,000 bed days were lost due to delayed discharges last year. There are solutions to be found in investing in community services and, ultimately, we must reorient our health service away from acute services into the community and deliver Sláintecare in full, focusing on prevention and early intervention.

Will the Minister provide the beds? Will she provide the staff? Will she commit in full to Sláintecare?

I am conscious that the region the Deputy represents has been the beneficiary of exactly that type of care outside Cork University Hospital, CUH, in Mallow in community nursing units, yet there is a continual articulation about putting money into CUH and vacancies there when, as the Deputy correctly said, the emphasis must be on the community.

In this year's budget, we have increased yet again the budget for older persons, for meals on wheels and for all of the types of day-to-day hospital-avoidance pieces that are so important. We will continue to do that. People waiting in hospital is not a uniform experience; it is very much a hospital-by-hospital experience. Patients in the Beaumont region, the Connolly region or the Drogheda region, all hospitals that have improved, will have a different experience from those in Cork based on how their hospital is managed, one that is not linked to resources that have gone into that hospital. The hospital in Tipperary has had a difficult few weeks but it has consistently improved over 2025 with an 81%-----

This is one of the largest hospitals in the country.

Indeed. It has the highest recruitment and yet has never improved its position, depending on how it has been managed.

It needs investment-----

Is it not extraordinary? St. James's is a bigger hospital and it has ten people on trolleys today. It is in an area of just as big a difficulty. There is an onus on management to make sure that it is using the resources it has.

Hear, hear.