Dr. Laura Durcan:

Okay. The issue for me is that I deal with acute patients who present at the emergency department. I have no understanding of whether they have private healthcare or what type of funding they are bringing with them to the emergency department. These are people with strokes and heart attacks. They are too sick to use the private system. What we are here today to discuss is creating access for everybody to the public system. Martin Varley is saying that whether one decides to have private health insurance should be an irrelevance. If somebody decides to have private health insurance and have his or her tonsils dealt with in Blackrock, that is the person's own business. The truth is that any of us could be in a car crash on the way home, and if we suffer trauma, we go to the public hospital. If we have a stroke, we go to the public hospital. This discussion is about the public hospital. If the public hospital had enough consultants and beds, how people are funding their healthcare would become a complete irrelevance. It would be just that they go to the hospital. That is why we are here today.

I do not have a private practice and have no vested interest in private patients. I am here because I want to make things better. We want to make things better and for VHI, Laya Healthcare or the like to be a choice. Whether that lines up with Sláintecare or with the de Buitléir report will be borne out over time with a great deal of discussion. What we want is for everybody to be able to access timely care in an emergency department and be seen by excellent people. That has yet to be borne out.