Ms Colette Cowan:

To be honest there is no pressure on us to generate private income. It is part of the normal workings of the hospital group that private patients come into hospital and they are billed accordingly. If we were to make cuts or try to come in on budget, it would not be on patient services. The patient is central to everything so one would look at other areas around non-pay to make some savings at year-end to reach a break-even position. One would look at medical and surgical supplies, drug usage and what is driving costs. That is the area we would focus on in the University of Limerick hospital group. We do not look every day at income to see if we can drive it up when it comes into the system. It is not as important as patient care. If we have to make service cuts, we would have long discussions and decisions around what we could cut in non-pay areas first to try to ensure we break even.