Mr. Jim Breslin:

The National Treatment Purchase Fund is another body under the aegis of the Department of Health, just like the HSE, but obviously it is a smaller body with smaller funding. We do put a programme of work in place with the NTPF. The one that is most familiar to people is tackling waiting lists. We have a significant programme of work under way this year and we are already seeing a reduction in inpatient and day case waiting lists as a result of that. There are two components to it; there are treatments in private hospitals on the island and also in one hospital in Northern Ireland, and then it also has funding available to the HSE where it can come up with a discrete proposal to do extra activity within HSE facilities.

I know the committee had the NTPF in last week. The Department has given the NTPF, under the nursing home subvention scheme, responsibility for negotiating pricing with private nursing homes. It has done that since the initiation of that scheme. It negotiates the prices; it does not pay the money. The payment is made by the HSE to the private nursing homes. The reason for that is that if the HSE were to do it, one could perceive a conflict because it also has its own facilities, so we separated that function out.