2026-07-09

95. Deputy Shay Brennan asked the Minister for Health for an update on the plan to increase capacity by between 4,000 and 4,500 new and refurbished inpatient hospital beds across the country; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [48058/26]

I ask the Minister for an update on the plan to increase the capacity of inpatient beds by 4,000 or 4,500 across the country and if she will make a statement on the matter. We know we currently have 12,000 public beds and 2,500 private beds, which is about 2.9 beds per thousand of the population. We also know that the ESRI has predicted a need for a 40% increase in inpatient beds by 2040 and that the plan in 2024 was to provide 3,352 new beds.

I thank the Deputy. The programme for Government, as the Deputy said, sets out a commitment to increase bed capacity by between 4,000 and 4,500 new and refurbished inpatient hospital beds across the country. This will be achieved through a regionally balanced capacity expansion plan. The substantially enhanced national development plan, NDP, provision for the health sector of €9.25 billion will support the delivery of those beds. To give the Deputy a much more specific update, 292 new acute inpatient beds have now opened across the country since the programme for Government was agreed, between January 2025 and June 2026, including 128 beds in University Hospital Limerick, 18 beds in Cork University Hospital, 15 beds in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, 20 beds in Beaumont Hospital and 24 beds in Mallow General Hospital. The HSE anticipates opening 108 more new beds over the course of quarter 3 and quarter 4 of 2026 and quarter 1 of 2027. Some 259 inpatient beds are currently under construction, including 97 beds at Wexford General Hospital, 42 beds at Sligo University Hospital and 30 beds in University Hospital Kerry. It is intended to open those beds as soon as possible once constructed. In fact, as the Deputy is aware, we are recruiting ahead of the beds being delivered to make sure the staff are there. A further 185 beds are at tender stage and another 152 beds are now at the detailed design stage. We are now seeing this bed-by-bed, significant pipeline of projects progressing through earlier stages of planning, design and approvals. Rather than giving the Deputy broad figures, I thought I would be very specific as to the progress being achieved.

I thank the Minister very much. We had the excellent Professor Rose Anne Kenny, co-ordinator of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, TILDA, in recently with the health committee. She pointed out the demographic challenge we are facing in health. We are going to have 1 million people over the age of 65 by 2030 and a doubling of the number of those aged over 65 by 2057, to 1.6 million people. We have already seen this trend happening from 2013, with an increase from 569,000 to 806,000. I bring these figures up because this challenge is looming. Obviously, beds are not a silver bullet, but they are going to be part of the overall way we manage health in future. We will probably start with proper screening programmes at the age of 50, with the whole population moving into better-resourced primary care, step-down beds and rehabilitation beds. I also support Deputy Seán Kyne’s call for the Minister to press for the 300 additional beds in UHG. This is a level 4 hospital operating with level 3 capacity.

I thank the Deputy. He will not hear any complaint from me about people pressing me to deliver more health infrastructure or to spend more capital moneys. I am doing my very best to spend my entire capital allocation as quickly as possible and I run the risk of spending other people’s capital allocation, if I can be so lucky or so bold. This is because, as the Deputy said, this infrastructure investment is essential for the future. While I do not wish to be flippant about it and, of course, we must achieve value for money and we must take the correct decisions through the right processes, we really have to aggressively spend on health infrastructure in the right way to make sure we are going to meet the very excellent challenge of having not just a growing population but an ageing population. Some of my European health colleagues do not have that same wonderful situation. Nevertheless, it creates a significant infrastructure challenge for us for the future.

I accept that answer and I thank the Minister very much for that update. It is important because people sometimes equate healthcare with hospital beds, but that is not reality. In isolation, beds cannot provide for the healthcare needs of the public. We will never develop enough capacity in beds unless we change the way we manage healthcare, both in preventative and in primary care. We really do have to step up the number of rehabilitation beds, step-down beds, home care packages, primary care therapies and nursing home beds in the community. We also need to think more strategically about how we manage the health of the population from the age of 50 onwards. Professor Rose Anne Kenny made that very point to the health committee. Deputy Sherlock already pointed out this challenge because we both listened to Professor Kenny's excellent presentation at the health committee last week.

I agree, particularly concerning rehab beds, step-down beds and neurorehab beds. I was in Blarney with Deputy Colm Burke to look at the neurorehab step-down beds in Mercy University Hospital. It was quite creatively done. It was a former hotel on a golf course that was acquired and redesigned for this purpose. We really are trying to be imaginative and innovative about where we can acquire space to be able to provide beds of every kind. I was in Tallaght University Hospital yesterday, where existing space has been found within the hospital to be repurposed for beds. I have been in hospitals where there are plans to turn records rooms, where patient records have been stored, into beds. Hospital managers are being creative where they can be at the moment, but none of those things are going to equate to the scale of the number of beds we need. We need this significant capital programme, which I hope I have outlined. I do really recognise the challenge.