Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The comment by Mr. MacGinnis is unhelpful, but it was useful for him to point out that he is not a clinician. I have an issue, however, which I imagine is shared by members. The suggestion is that a consultant, who has a duty of care to a patient in an acute bed, should be worried about what is happening downstairs. To my mind that is not their job. The duty of care is to the patient in the bed.

Will Mr. MacGinnis elaborate further on his comment about consultants holding on to beds to service their patients? If there is truth in this we, as a committee, need to investigate. I do not know what Mr. MacGinnis is getting at. I do not want to misquote him, but is he suggesting that, for example, an orthopaedic surgeon might keep a lad in a bed a day longer because he knows he has a patient coming in? What is he suggesting here? It is unhelpful to make comments like this and to have to clarify and preface and so on. The witnesses are here as witnesses to a committee of the Oireachtas. Making comments that are not necessarily backed up by anything other than opinion is unhelpful. Will Mr. MacGinnis elaborate further on the idea of holding on to beds?