Mr. Jim Breslin:

Deputy Kelleher made a point that the legislation allowing charging to take place regardless of whether a patient is in a designated bed or not was done for budgetary purposes. The Deputy is correct in what he says. However, I do not know that it was done to incentivise a growth in private practice. It was done for budgetary purposes because, as Mr. O'Brien said, there were private patients in public hospitals whose consultants were getting a fee for treating them on a private basis, but the public hospitals were getting nothing. The implication of that was the public system was subsidising the private one. The policy decision was made to try to remove that subsidy, and have the private patients bear the cost of their treatment in the public hospital. Private health insurers sometimes equate that with whether one gets a private bed or not but the bed is the cheapest part of one's stay in hospital and it is all the things done to one that account for the majority of expense. At present private patients in a public hospital, regardless of their position in that hospital, is being charged for the cost of their treatment, or at least an approximation of the cost of the treatment. That was done to remove a subsidy and there was a good bit of policy work done around that. That is a separate issue as to whether private patients should continue in public hospitals in the future. That is a big call. I think that is for the Committee on the Future of Healthcare to decide on, and to examine the repercussions of that. The policy rationale for the legislation was to remove a subsidy. I do not believe it was to try to incentivise a growth in private practice. As the Minister said, we can do a report on that.