Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Fair enough. I am with Dr. Colleran when it comes to the two-tier system. It cannot operate anymore and the drawbacks are huge. The finances of it do not make sense. It is obvious it cannot continue.

On changes to contracts, we also need to have greater transparency with the public-private mix because that would help everyone. It would help the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, it would help us as decision makers and it would help in the provision of funding. We will have to have it to deal with that turnaround period of time in the next decade or so to achieve what we want to achieve with Sláintecare. That is my last comment on that matter.

I come from the mid-west. I am on a campaign at the moment regarding University Hospital Limerick, UHL. The Chairman is my colleague in this campaign. Neither of us is even from Limerick. We are from Tipperary and Clare, but it is our main hospital. It is a scandal if one does a comparative analysis on the volume of doctors and consultants in UHL versus Beaumont Hospital. They are both model 4 hospitals. I have the tables done on this analysis and it is a disgrace. It cannot continue. The people of the mid-west are being discriminated against. UHL had eight medical physicians and consultants who left in recent years. A number of them joined different organisations. Two of them moved because they had more than 100 patients on their lists and they just could not cope.

I have only one more question after this but I asked the Medical Council of Ireland about this earlier and it did not have very good quantitative analysis, to be fair to it. It will improve that based on suggestions we made. I return to the issue of why consultants are leaving. There are a variety of reasons for this, and I dare say they are not always financial, although some of them are. Working conditions and geography are other variables. Are there any instances of consultants leaving that are specifically geography related based on the structures of the HSE in certain locations or does the Irish Hospital Consultants Association have any evidence of same?