Winter Plan must increase our ICU bed capacity

Sinn Fein TD for Dublin South West Seán Crowe TD has said that the Government’s Winter Plan for the Health Service must include a focussed investment in Intensive Care Unit beds and that these beds must be permanent, not just wheeled out until the COVID crisis passes.
 
Teachta Crowe said:
 
“The Government’s Winter Plan for Health proposes to invest an additional €600m in our Health Service over the next few months. We cannot simply throw money at the problem however. Any investment must be targeted and focussed and it must increase the capacity of our ICUs.
 
“A 2009 report commissioned by the HSE said that Ireland would need 579 ICU beds by 2020. The staff I was talking to in Tallaght Hospital have informed me that we only have 275 across the entire health Service. We actually have less ICU beds than when the report was published.
 
“Those same staff in Tallaght Hospital tell me that they have a plan to double their existing capacity. All they need is the support from Government to make it a reality. We should be supporting our hospitals and increasing capacity, not commissioning endless reports that tell us the same thing.
 
“One of the main motivations behind the stringent lockdown we faced from March this year was so that our hospitals, and particularly our ICUs, were not overwhelmed by COVID patients. Had the HSE heeded their own advice 11 years ago, perhaps that would not have been such a dire possibility.
 
“And this is not just as a measure to fight COVID; even before the pandemic, surgeries were routinely cancelled due to the lack of space in ICUs. This only allowed waiting lists that were already out of control to grow further.
 
“The Winter Plan and Budget 2021, which is due to be released in the next month, must include a provision for massively increasing our ICU bed capacity. If COVID is to be with us for the foreseeable future, then it both sensible and the right thing to do by our Health Service and the people who rely upon it.”