We are a large organisation of over 100,000 people, whose job is to run all of the public health services in Ireland. We provide thousands of different services in hospitals and communities across the country. At some stage every year, everybody in Ireland will use one or more of the services we provide.

Our hospital services are provided in 50 hospitals, within 4 regions across Ireland.

There are also 32 Local Health Offices across the country providing services in the community. We have 800 facilities that provide community-based mental health services and 11 ambulance command and control centres co-ordinating pre-hospital emergency care services for 97 ambulance stations.

Ireland has 4 Cancer Control networks, with 8 Cancer Centres. We have over 650 local health centres throughout the country.

The services we provide in our hospitals:

• Acute services are delivered through 50 acute hospitals. Acute hospitals provide a comprehensive range of assessment, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation services on a regional, supra-regional or national basis.
• More complex procedures are provided in supra-regional centres, including neurosurgery, cardiac surgery, complex cancer treatments and radiotherapy.
• Designated national specialist services incorporate areas of care such as heart/lung/liver/renal transplantation, spinal injuries, paediatric cardiac services and medical genetics.
• In addition to direct service provision, there are a number of arrangements in place with other service providers in Ireland for the delivery of specific services, e.g. renal dialysis.
• Pre-hospital emergency care services (ambulance and emergency response services) are also provided.
• Hospitals also play a key role in undergraduate and postgraduate training, the education of medical and health service professionals and essential clinical and related research with universities.