Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am trying to explain to her that current expenditure will refer primarily to service provision. If the hospital wishes to extend its range of services, borrowing may become a part of that. If they can secure income, for example, if they were to go into another jurisdiction and offer procedures to patients from the North of Ireland, paid for by that jurisdiction, they could provide a compelling case where they would wish to borrow the money. The hospital would still have to get ministerial approval and to go through the checks and balances with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the HSE. If we prohibit that possibility in legislation, they can never do it. We are trying to allow for that possibility subject to the controls and whatever.

I appreciate that the Deputy's fear is that this is a way of letting the State stand back from funding day-to-day expenditure. That is not the idea in this regard. The idea is that we do not tie their hands behind their backs before they start to expand or explore a range of service delivery expansion, if they so wish. If we prohibit that in legislation now, they can never do it and having that facility would be an understandable objective of any medical entity that would be established in the modern age.