Dr. Aidan Buckley:

It is entirely appropriate that people ask questions about primary PCI, but to reiterate, it is a small part of our work. We also deal with 700 plus people on an outpatient waiting list and countless others, hundreds per year, who lie in inpatient beds waiting for semi-urgent procedures. They are the bulk of our day-to-day work. I know people understandably get drawn towards the primary PCI, which I count as a very important facet of the process, but we must not lose sight of the other unmet needs that exist.

Deputy Halligan asked what we would like to see as an outcome from the committee meeting. One thing we would like to see is the rejection by the committee of the Herity report. I have said this in a public forum and I will say it again. If this were a scientific paper - in a sense that is what it is - it would not make it as far as the editor because of its flawed methodology. Professor Herity could only have arrived at the conclusions he arrived at because of the methodology he adopted. It was a self-fulfilling prophesy from the beginning. It was asked at the beginning by Senator Coffey where the biases were. A briefing document was issued by the Department of Health giving its views on the situation so the reviewer was given the Department's opinion. Nobody asked me for my opinion.