James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In short, I suppose I could say the following. Currently, we do not have a licensing system. Therefore, this is confined to public hospitals. In the future there will be licensing, and if other private hospitals meet the criteria, of course they can be included. However, the important point to make is that such hospitals will then be subject to the same monitoring as public hospitals under the licensing arrangement and the competition issue will not arise.

If it were, as Deputy Creed suggests, my intention that it will only be open to public hospitals to provide this service forevermore, then I would be in trouble with competition law. Given that this is the beginning of a process, however, I am covered.