Crisis in delayed transfers of patients out of acute hospitals hits new milestone costing acute hospitals €20.4m every month with no plan for investment while Ministers “try” to rein in overall deficit with reckless penny pinching measures

Marie Sherlock

26 July 2026

Crisis in delayed transfers of patients out of acute hospitals hits new milestone costing acute hospitals €20.4m every month with no plan for investment while Ministers “try” to rein in overall deficit with reckless penny pinching measures - The Labour Party

• 103 consecutive days of delayed transfers of care at code red levels across acute hospitals, at an enormous financial cost to acute hospitals of over €20m every month and very serious implications for patients in terms of access to appropriate step down care and increased risk to their recovery while waiting to leave hospital.
  
• Almost 50% of delayed transfers (1,564) up to the end of April 2026 were down to a lack of nursing home/ residential care support with the average delayed transfer of care at a shocking 24.8 days across all acute hospitals in 2025.

• Government action plan for increasing access to step down care is desperately needed but there has been no concerted action on this. Meanwhile the Ministers for Public Expenditure and Reform and Health have instituted a reckless penny pinching farce on June 19th to try and rein in the overall health budget by insisting that every single routine invoice worth €10,000 or more must be sent from each acute hospital directly to the CEO of the HSE for approval. Not only is this dangerous and reckless for our health services, no efficient well functioning mid sized company would ever operate like this.

Labour Party Health Spokesperson Marie Sherlock TD has said Government’s shameful lack of action on step down care in our health system is creating an unnecessary crisis in our acute hospitals in terms of delayed transfers of care out of hospital, the enormous financial cost to our health system of inefficient bed use and the massive personal cost to the patients waiting to be discharged and the patients waiting to be admitted into hospital.

Deputy Sherlock said:

“It is frankly unacceptable that we now have a situation where more than 500 patients every day for more than 100 days cannot be discharged from our acute hospital system as a result of the lack of nursing home capacity, specialist dementia or other rehabilitation beds and home care supports.

“The delay in discharging patients is not a trivial issue; the average delay in 2025 was a shocking 24.8 days with all hospitals struggling to varying degrees to move patients efficiently out of acute care.

“We know that the cost of an acute daybed is about €1,300 – five times the cost of a community unit bed per day.

“For the past 103 days, the HSE has lost 53,391 bed days in acute hospitals because of delays to discharging patients into appropriate step down care.

“This comes at an average cost to acute hospitals of over €20m every month; this is a woefully ineffective way to use money, especially where the HSE is struggling with overspending and underbudgeting, year-on-year.

“We have heard lots from the Minister over the past year with regard to the productivity of consultants within acute hospitals and rightfully so, but there has been deafening silence to date with regard to the major hole in our health services with regard to step down care- no review of patient flow and productivity within the hospital system can ignore the delayed transfer of care issue.

“I have spent months raising this issue in the Dáil; the vacant step down beds in Cherry Orchard in Dublin, the shocking delays to the opening of the new community nursing units in Killarney and Letterkenny, the devastating closure of four nursing homes in Galway in quick succession and the serious shortages of dementia specific beds in the Cork region. But there has been no response.

“In July, we were eventually told that work has commenced on an expansion plan for step down care but if the current approach to health budget is anything to go by, we will see no action on this.

“Incredibly, the Ministers for Public Expenditure and Reform and Health, in response to the HSE deficit worth €400m in May, appear to have directly overrided  financial controls in the HSE and have insisted on reckless fiscal control measures.

“In a memo to all acute hospitals on June 19^th, they insisted that all routine invoices in every acute hospital worth €10,000 or more were to be sent directly to the CEO of the HSE for approval.

“Bizarrely this ranges from the the fruit and vegetable bill and the milk bill to the invoice for taxis for dialysis services and the sophisticated pharmacy procurement arrangements that operate across hospitals every single day.

“Such is the level of disarray in Government on the Health budget, the Ministers issued a new memo on July 6^th that directed that each REO must then sign off on all invoices over €100,000. We are aware that this diktat has already created serious bottlenecks with regard to accessing specialist chemo drugs, with resolutions only coming at the “11^th hour”.

“This dangerous and reckless method of financial control is no way to run a health service and it will impose even greater costs to the health service over the medium term because uncertainty and last minute purchasing will have to be priced into procurement and supply chains.

“The reality is that Government is presiding over eye watering waste in our health service. This needs to change. They need to invest in step down care to reduce the waste within our acute hospital system and ensure that the major allocation to our acute hospitals is being spent well.

“The Minister for Health must urgently intervene to intervene all vacant step down beds are brought into use and that there is an action plan to meet the considerable growing needs of the future.

“Delayed transfers of care are having a direct knock-on effect on admissions. It is unacceptable that patients are being treated on corridor with staff struggling to provide safe care, while others cannot be discharged out of the hospital.

“Crucially this is an issue that is not going away but will increase further in the future.

“According to ERSI projections published in 2022, Ireland needs between 21,500 to 27,500 additional nursing beds by 2040. Instead, we are going backwards – we have 916 less nursing home beds now in 2026 than in 2022 and  most of the community beds being developed under HSE service plan are replacement and are not new beds.

“The Minister must urgently publish the awaited long-term residential care additional capacity plan and Government must commit to the full funding of this plan.”

ENDS

PQ 29963/26

Average number of days waiting during 2025 – headlines

• Acute hospitals state in their own parliamentary responses to Labour Health Spokesperson Marie Sherlock that the lack of nursing home supports, home care and step-down beds are having a significant impact on delayed transfers of care.
• Deputy Sherlock raised the closure of four nursing homes in Galway in recent times, the closure of two wards in Cherry Orchard for almost the past two years, the fact that the Killarney Community Nursing Unit was ready a year and a half ago and is yet to be opened, and the closure of beds at the South Infirmary.
• Total numbers of people who experienced a delayed transfer of care is 3327 between 1.1.26 and 30.04.26.

PQ 29961/26

% of delayed transfers of care by category between 1.1.26 to 30.04.26 – headlines