Analysis: Promises of more beds are encouraging, but then it is an election year, writes Padraig O'Morain
The good news is that the hospitals have been doing a far better job than many of us thought. The bad news is that getting hospital services up to an acceptable level will take the provision of more than 4,000 extra beds by 2011.
Yesterday, however, the focus was not on the 4,335 extra beds recommended by the review of acute hospital bed capacity.
It was on this election year of 2002 and the 709 extra acute beds promised by the Minister for Health and Children at a cost of €65 million.
Mr Martin happily contrasted this figure with the 450 beds promised in the national health strategy.
And he promised, hand on heart, that the beds would be up and running by the end of the year. To those who are sceptical of the health system's ability to staff these beds he declared that nurse recruitment had increased dramatically.
His parade was promptly rained on by the Irish Nurses Organisation which said there is already a nursing shortfall in the country of 1,200 nurses and that the Minister's 709 beds would require an additional 1,100 nurses.
Many of these beds, of course, are not due to be put into place until after the General Election.
Mr Martin argues that the beds he has promised are the beds the hospitals and health boards told him they can put into operation this year.
All that said, however, this year's promised beds are a drop in the ocean - admittedly a €65 million drop - compared to the thousands of beds needed over the coming decade.
Where, it has to be asked, is the staffing for these beds to come from? And if the staff can be found are there other issues which could get in the way of progress?
However, it appears the Irish hospital system responds better to challenges than it is given credit for. The system did not lie down under the deep cuts of the 1980s and early 1990s when 6,000 beds were lost.
What it did was to increase the number of day case treatments from 8,000 in 1980 to 320,000 in 2000. This has helped to bring about a 57 per cent increase in hospital activity since 1980.
The report suggests an extra 200 beds could be brought into use for public patients through more effective management of these beds.
What's needed now is to give the system the extra beds - and the 2011 deadline for that is at least two general elections away.