Mr. John Horan:

The policy changed when we got the system working and so on. The Deputy is correct. When the NTPF was first established, we had a Government directive that we had to spend a minimum of 90% of our funding in private hospitals. That is gone. It is now open season. As I said, wherever we get the best value for money is where we should spend our allocation. We do not have a huge allocation, so we have to spend it wisely.

The Deputy mentioned people who will never be able to afford to get into the private system. In effect, over the years where the public system has not met people's needs. We have taken money that was allocated to the NTPF for this purpose and used it to put public patients into the private system and pay for their care. We managed to blur the lines. We are now putting our first €5 million into the private sector and our second €5 million into the public sector.

As I said in my opening statement, we will evaluate the outcome in determining where the third €5 million goes. More important, we have €50 million next year for public patient treatment commissioning. Where we spend that €50 million will be very much informed by our experiences this year. We are learning as we go and we will base our decisions on that. We have no ideological hang-ups. We have waiting lists because hospitals do not have capacity. There is capacity in private hospitals. That may not always be the case. If we can incentivise them or whatever, that may work.

That leads me on to the Deputy's question about the integrated waiting list management system, on which she is very keen. At our level, we have started that process and it is under way. I can tell her that, as of now, all stakeholders have been identified and have been written to. We have asked various experts and stakeholders to nominate nominees to participate in a project in the group study we are doing. The project approach has been outlined and the scope has been done. We have defined the review and so on.

We have commenced the socialising of a project charter which is due for sign-off this week. I know the Minister has committed to talking to the Deputy during the summer recess and to meeting her separately on that. The process is under way. It is a start. I know the Deputy wants it done on a national level, and we may well get there. At least we have made a start.

The approach of Scotland is interesting in that large sections of nursing homes are leased. Does that means one part of a private nursing home houses private patients and the other public patients? I wonder about the benefit of that. The system we have is seamless, whether someone is being paid for out of their own funding, their families' or from the State purse through the nursing homes support scheme. The lines are blurred. One does not see those lines when one walks into the door of a nursing home.