Mr. Martin Varley:

We brought it to the Department's attention quite early on in our discussions with officials. We did that for the simple reason that we were very concerned about continuity of care for patients of private practice consultants. We could see that the contract being offered to our members was cutting across that and our members were concerned about events happening for cardiac patients, oncology patients and others that would be detrimental to their health. We flagged it quite early on and because we were making so little progress we wrote to the Minister on 30 April outlining that this arrangement was going to prove extremely poor value for money, poor value for patients and there was a very high risk we would not be able to utilise the capacity to the extent that we should.